ICR failed in Indonesian Election

An Indonesian news portal article criticized the decision to choose Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) as a method to report the counts result from regional level to the central data center in Jakarta. It is reported that M. Shalahuddien of Indonesia Security Incident Responses Team on Internet Infrastructure (ID-SIRTII) mentioned some reason why this decision was already in the beginning criticized from many parties. With ICR the reports which are written by hand would be scanned and the characters would be recognized and stored automatically as digital data. However, given the fact that Indonesians have various style ofhand writings (even though the characters are Latin ones), the failure rate could be very high. Not yet accounted is that the power availability in many areas in Indonesia is not stable. It is said that 500 regional chapters of the Election Comittee were giving up already with their tired operators. As the result, the reporting is running very slow than expected.
This is the example how the clarity of the concept may influence the IT implementation.
The Election was held on April 9, in which 11,000 candidates fought for 550 seats in Indonesian parliament. Being voted also were regional representatives (similar with Senator in the US) and the provincial parliament legislatures.

Post-silicon era in sight?

In recent edition of Technology Review online magazine, a group of MIT researchers are reported to claim that they are succeeded in making and operating a new non-silicon transistor with only 60-nm gate length but with better performance than a 65-nm silicon transistor.
The transistor is made of indium-gallium-arsenide as substitute of silicon and indium-aluminium-arsenide as substitute of silicon-dioxide as gate material. Jesus del Alamo explained that wirh this compound material the Moore's law can be maintained in the future. Electrons can flow faster in the material than in silicon, provides a basis for better shrinking in smaller transistors.
The question is, how much is needed to convert the whole design and production lines which are currently used for silicon-based transistor?

Bali and Jepara IT-supported industry?

Everyone should have known Bali as it is the world's best island for many straight years. Everyone who is involved in high-class exotic furniture also should have known Jepara, which exports US$ 112 million valued products annually. But doesn't anybody think that both tourism and furniture industry need to modernize themselves with high technology approach?
To keep those industries running, nowadays IT is badly needed. Some good info websites are already available. In tourist area like Bali, a centralized hotel and travel booking system will help tourists and the Balinese themselves a lot. A good online Bali map which guides the tourists everywhere with GPS supported device will also be very helpful for tourists who want to conquer the island conveniently. And of course with a good data system, Indonesian security bodies can recognize as early as possible any unwanted threats.
For Jepara, a good IT system can help them to forecast quickly wood supplies and to collect number and specification of the orders enough time before the deadline. This will result better resources allocation and will avoid either overpricing or underpricing. Many ERP and CRM software products are available in Indonesian market, including some developed-in-Indonesia like ones produced by Zahir Accounting and Mitrais. The latter has even a development site in Bali. There are a lot potentials in developing high tech industry in Indonesia, also because the government has launched Indonesia, Go Open Source! (IGOS) program and in the same time also improves relationship with Microsoft :-)