racoma.com.phJ. Angelo Racoma on technology, economics, writing, problogging, and getting things done

Judging from the ton of comments on my post about the ZTE Broadband Deal I can say that students around the Philippines are not really into political and social issues. Why? Well, their schools ask them to make all sorts of projects, writeups and research papers on the topics that they’re probably sick of it.

And my post wasn’t even about the “ZTE Broadband deal” issue itself! Take a look and you’ll know what I mean.

Sure, I know a few things about the inner dealings of government. Romulo Neri had been my boss for a couple of years, after all, albeit not directly. And the department of NEDA I worked for before was tasked with reviewing projects and facilitating financing from foreign governments, China included. I can say the accusations of alleged corrupt practices are probable.

But that is not to say I know anything about the “ZTE Broadband deal” myself outside of what I hear or read from the news).

If you are interested in learning more about the “ZTE Broadband deal” as it is publicized in the media coverages of the ongoing Philippine Senate inquiry, you can refer to this post about the NBN ZTE Project on Yugatech.

To put it shortly, the project was for a concessional loan by the Chinese government for the procurement and setup of a broadband network by the Philippine government. And as Chinese loans usually go, one condition is that the Chinese government choose the supplier (which is counter to the Government Procurement Reform Act, which says such should be bid out by the Philippine government, but is legal under the ODA Law, as amended).

Now the issue here is not the legality of the method of procurement. As is usual with government procurement, the main issue is the accusations of the padding of the project cost to accommodate commissions and kickbacks, and the supposed involvement of people who are in power who have allegedly used their influence to benefit from the project.

There is a difference between what is moral and what is legal.

Now when they say “Moderate their greed,” It usually means “reduce the project cost to more rational or reasonable levels.” But then in Philippine governance, it may usually mean something else. And this very phrase has helped spark controversy the more.

Happy researching!

This is perhaps the best news I’ve seen lately. I got an email from PayPal saying Philippine users can now withdraw PayPal funds into our local bank accounts.

New! Withdraw Your Funds to Your Philippine Bank Account

Now you can add your Philippine bank account to your PayPal account, so you can withdraw your money directly to your bank. It saves you time and gives you faster access to your PayPal funds!

Plus, there is no charge to withdrawal amounts over PHP 7000*. So go ahead and add your bank account today!

Withdrawals of less than PhP 7,000 are only charged PhP 50. How great is that?

For more information, head on to the Philippine PayPal withdrawal page. A list of supported banks is here.

I think I’ll link up my PayPal account to those banks which have online access, so I can monitor how quickly funds are transfered.

“Macgyver” over at ForeverGeek ponders on the true nature of DIGG.com, the social bookmarking-cum-tech news site that had gained massive popularity among the geek crowd (and even non-geeks/techies) as it was touted as the Slashdot of Web 2.0—meaning it’s a news site where the content creation/submission and editorial control is decentralized. Essentially, it’s the readers and users who are supposed to say what comes up the front page (they “DIGG” articles), or what’s not newsworthy (either not “DUGG” or simply “buried” with negative votes).

Digg as an idea is fantastic. As a system of disseminating news without having to wait for editors it is amazing. But it seems to be suffering from a power complex. The two articles we originally mentioned were obviously promoted to the front page in an artificial manager.. Our website getting banned was obviously in retaliation to our story. Their entire philosophy now feels shallow and false – the editors decidedly put those two articles to the front page, just like they decidedly removed us from their system. Users may have originally driven the website, but it looks like that ideal is nothing more than a nice idea in the past.

So, ForeverGeek (a site which I also write for) has been banned from DIGG for allegedly being abusive. I’m all for getting “DIGG” into the dictionary as a verb, and having it as word of the year for 2006. But with concerns such as Macgyver’s, one might have doubts as to the sincerity of the creators’ efforts. I mean, I’m an avid fan of Kevin Rose and the rest of the DIGG creators/crew. But incidents like these (the FG banning) just show that even good things can be corrupted. And DIGG runs the risk of becoming just another centralized/editorialized news site. Whether or not the creators are involved, this would affect them in a negative light.

At any rate, I tend to think that a whole army of DIGG fans would, of course, be in defense of DIGG. But this should serve as an eye-opener: is Web 2.0 really what it’s set out to be? Or are we just eventually evolving into yet another Web 1.0 model?