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today was traveling on the road and could not help but noticing that those commerical vehicles are keeping to the left lane.. at most 1 or 2 odd one on the 2nd lane.. i think these were mainly due to the newspaper reporting more cmmerical vehicles kena book by TP.. Hope they keep to their lane for a longer period before TP take action again...

China officials slam themselves - on TV Criticism session part of CCP's self-cleansing campaign: Observers Published on Sep 27, 2013 Mr Xi has pledged to clean up the CCP by ridding its ranks of bureaucracy and extravagance. -- PHOTO: REUTERS By Kor Kian Beng, China Bureau Chief, In Beijing IT WAS a made-for-television criticism and self-criticism show. In an unprecedented move, China's state broadcaster CCTV showed top officials of Hebei province criticising "impatient" superiors even as they admitted to overspending on things like official cars and lavish dinners. Observers noted that the programme televised on Wednesday is a first, and shows the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intensifying its "self-cleansing" campaign. They also said other provinces might follow Hebei's lead, and that the people would dismiss such "self-criticism" sessions as a mere show, unless errant officials were also taken to task. On Wednesday, viewers saw Hebei party boss Zhou Benshun reproaching himself for being impractical and less hard-working than before, while his subordinates criticised him for not doing more to help the poor and neglecting environmental issues. The provincial party boss also criticised a subordinate, Qinhuangdao city's party chief. "I feel Tian Xiangli is too hungry for success and over-eager to prove herself and impress her bosses. Such behaviour will lead us to do things that are irrelevant to the people's interests," he said. Besides Mr Zhou, Hebei deputy party boss Zhao Yong was also shown confessing to being impulsive, and provincial governor Zhang Qingwei to being arrogant. The criticism and self-criticism took place during three days of meetings starting on Monday to discuss how to improve the people's livelihoods. President Xi Jinping, who has pledged to clean up the CCP by ridding its ranks of bureaucracy and extravagance, attended the meetings. Provincial propaganda chief Ai Wenli noted that Hebei "wasted" 3.3 million yuan (S$674,000) on Chinese New Year celebrations last year, while Vice-Governor Yang Chongwen said the annual budget ballooned from 253 million yuan last year to 660 million yuan this year due to a massive jump in the expenditure on official cars. China's 25 Politburo members, including Mr Xi, held a similar session over four days in June. Mr Xi sounded a warning when he said: "Don't think that all is fine if you pass the 'test' at such sessions. You should continue to think more deeply about how to improve people's lives." Hong Kong-based observer Willy Lam said the purpose of the sessions is to "ensure regional leaders follow instructions from the top and consolidate Xi's power". Many see the revival of self-criticism, common during the Cultural Revolution, as a reflection of Mr Xi's Maoist ideals. Professor Lam said it shows "that Xi still believes in the rule of man rather than the rule of law". Singapore-based analyst Bo Zhiyue noted Hebei's leaders were careful to admit to their shortcomings rather than to mistakes that might expose them to party discipline or criminal prosecution. "They were praising one another in a negative way, such as how they were impatient because they were so eager to serve the people," said Dr Bo, an analyst at the East Asian Institute. All this could backfire on the CCP, said Renmin University analyst Zhang Ming. "The public will enjoy watching officials criticising themselves, but they won't be pleased if these officials are not punished." [email protected]

Feel abit sianz of what you are doing? not passionate about your job? things not exactly going you want? Struggling to meet your Kpis? But cannot quit cos you need your monthly pay? Anyone like that and what are you going to do about it?

Recently, I found my very kilat, highly polished car scratched by someone possibly using car keys since the width of scratch marks resemble them. I had parked my car in a proper lot at a shopping centre as always and right in the centre of the lot so that as to prevent dents on my car doors by other careless drivers when they open theirs. Perhaps whoever the scratcher is, is red-eye and jealous because it's a luxury car. I have this to say to all such low-life car-scratchers. The more cars you scratch, the more bad karma you collect. And you will wonder why your life is so miserable and why people can afford nice cars? Well, you can jolly well blame it on yourself because you will remain low-life for life without any hope whatsoever of living the good life. Sure, it affects me to see my car scratched. But I tell you this. I have the money to send my car to the best car respray centre and it will look as good as before and I can afford it without batting an eyelid. Before you scratch another car, think what come uppance you will receive in the future. You may feel shiok for a while, but the price you ultimately pay is many times worse. I hope you have enough sense to change for the better. If not, continue to live low-life you deserve!

PM Lee said that whatever MM Lee spoke is his own opinion, and remember just few days ago, PAP Ministers said a car cannot have 2 drivers??? And now PAP is driving a car with some many different voices? They will be confused and send all Singaporean to a wrong location. We need Opp to take over and be PAP's driving instructor now!

Exciting stuff from Google as always. It'd be tricky to implement, but when it comes to daily commuting, unless I'm driving a sportscar and not stuck in a jam, I'd be happy to let the car drive itself to work. I can understand such a system on the Prius, but it seems out of place for an Audi TT which I think is meant to be driven rather than used as a grocery getter, unless it's the older, duller one... http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/science/...ref=global-home ----------------------------------------- Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Anyone driving the twists of Highway 1 between San Francisco and Los Angeles recently may have glimpsed a Toyota Prius with a curious funnel-like cylinder on the roof. Harder to notice was that the person at the wheel was not actually driving. The car is a project of Google, which has been working in secret but in plain view on vehicles that can drive themselves, using artificial-intelligence software that can sense anything near the car and mimic the decisions made by a human driver. With someone behind the wheel to take control if something goes awry and a technician in the passenger seat to monitor the navigation system, seven test cars have driven 1,000 miles without human intervention and more than 140,000 miles with only occasional human control. One even drove itself down Lombard Street in San Francisco, one of the steepest and curviest streets in the nation. The only accident, engineers said, was when one Google car was rear-ended while stopped at a traffic light. Autonomous cars are years from mass production, but technologists who have long dreamed of them believe that they can transform society as profoundly as the Internet has. Robot drivers react faster than humans, have 360-degree perception and do not get distracted, sleepy or intoxicated, the engineers argue. They speak in terms of lives saved and injuries avoided — more than 37,000 people died in car accidents in the United States in 2008. The engineers say the technology could double the capacity of roads by allowing cars to drive more safely while closer together. Because the robot cars would eventually be less likely to crash, they could be built lighter, reducing fuel consumption. But of course, to be truly safer, the cars must be far more reliable than, say, today’s personal computers, which crash on occasion and are frequently infected. The Google research program using artificial intelligence to revolutionize the automobile is proof that the company’s ambitions reach beyond the search engine business. The program is also a departure from the mainstream of innovation in Silicon Valley, which has veered toward social networks and Hollywood-style digital media. During a half-hour drive beginning on Google’s campus 35 miles south of San Francisco last Wednesday, a Prius equipped with a variety of sensors and following a route programmed into the GPS navigation system nimbly accelerated in the entrance lane and merged into fast-moving traffic on Highway 101, the freeway through Silicon Valley. It drove at the speed limit, which it knew because the limit for every road is included in its database, and left the freeway several exits later. The device atop the car produced a detailed map of the environment. The car then drove in city traffic through Mountain View, stopping for lights and stop signs, as well as making announcements like “approaching a crosswalk” (to warn the human at the wheel) or “turn ahead” in a pleasant female voice. This same pleasant voice would, engineers said, alert the driver if a master control system detected anything amiss with the various sensors. The car can be programmed for different driving personalities — from cautious, in which it is more likely to yield to another car, to aggressive, where it is more likely to go first. Christopher Urmson, a Carnegie Mellon University robotics scientist, was behind the wheel but not using it. To gain control of the car he has to do one of three things: hit a red button near his right hand, touch the brake or turn the steering wheel. He did so twice, once when a bicyclist ran a red light and again when a car in front stopped and began to back into a parking space. But the car seemed likely to have prevented an accident itself. When he returned to automated “cruise” mode, the car gave a little “whir” meant to evoke going into warp drive on “Star Trek,” and Dr. Urmson was able to rest his hands by his sides or gesticulate when talking to a passenger in the back seat. He said the cars did attract attention, but people seem to think they are just the next generation of the Street View cars that Google uses to take photographs and collect data for its maps. The project is the brainchild of Sebastian Thrun, the 43-year-old director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, a Google engineer and the co-inventor of the Street View mapping service. In 2005, he led a team of Stanford students and faculty members in designing the Stanley robot car, winning the second Grand Challenge of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a $2 million Pentagon prize for driving autonomously over 132 miles in the desert. Besides the team of 15 engineers working on the current project, Google hired more than a dozen people, each with a spotless driving record, to sit in the driver’s seat, paying $15 an hour or more. Google is using six Priuses and an Audi TT in the project. The Google researchers said the company did not yet have a clear plan to create a business from the experiments. Dr. Thrun is known as a passionate promoter of the potential to use robotic vehicles to make highways safer and lower the nation’s energy costs. It is a commitment shared by Larry Page, Google’s co-founder, according to several people familiar with the project. The self-driving car initiative is an example of Google’s willingness to gamble on technology that may not pay off for years, Dr. Thrun said. Even the most optimistic predictions put the deployment of the technology more than eight years away. One way Google might be able to profit is to provide information and navigation services for makers of autonomous vehicles. Or, it might sell or give away the navigation technology itself, much as it offers its Android smart phone system to cellphone companies. But the advent of autonomous vehicles poses thorny legal issues, the Google researchers acknowledged. Under current law, a human must be in control of a car at all times, but what does that mean if the human is not really paying attention as the car crosses through, say, a school zone, figuring that the robot is driving more safely than he would? And in the event of an accident, who would be liable — the person behind the wheel or the maker of the software? “The technology is ahead of the law in many areas,” said Bernard Lu, senior staff counsel for the California Department of Motor Vehicles. “If you look at the vehicle code, there are dozens of laws pertaining to the driver of a vehicle, and they all presume to have a human being operating the vehicle.” The Google researchers said they had carefully examined California’s motor vehicle regulations and determined that because a human driver can override any error, the experimental cars are legal. Mr. Lu agreed. Scientists and engineers have been designing autonomous vehicles since the mid-1960s, but crucial innovation happened in 2004 when the Pentagon’s research arm began its Grand Challenge. The first contest ended in failure, but in 2005, Dr. Thrun’s Stanford team built the car that won a race with a rival vehicle built by a team from Carnegie Mellon University. Less than two years later, another event proved that autonomous vehicles could drive safely in urban settings. Advances have been so encouraging that Dr. Thrun sounds like an evangelist when he speaks of robot cars. There is their potential to reduce fuel consumption by eliminating heavy-footed stop-and-go drivers and, given the reduced possibility of accidents, to ultimately build more lightweight vehicles. There is even the farther-off prospect of cars that do not need anyone behind the wheel. That would allow the cars to be summoned electronically, so that people could share them. Fewer cars would then be needed, reducing the need for parking spaces, which consume valuable land. And, of course, the cars could save humans from themselves. “Can we text twice as much while driving, without the guilt?” Dr. Thrun said in a recent talk. “Yes, we can, if only cars will drive themselves.” -------------------------------------------

F1 Stars Keep Themselves Busy Its the end of the Formula One season but the drivers have been keeping busy. Michael Schumacher, Nelson Piquet Jr, Sebastian Buemi took part in the Supernational

With the recent news coming from a High Court case of unethical property agents, why do owners not sell their property themselves. Be it HDB or private. To be safe, owners should just require their own legal counsel in conveyancy ( private ). For HDB, almost everything is controlled by them anyway. The reasons given by many are varied but the most often reason is...No time. So what would be your reasons if you were to get a property agent to do the selling or buying for you?

A little boy went into a drug store, reached for a soda carton and pulled it over to the telephone. He climbed onto the carton so that he could reach the buttons on the phone and proceeded to punch in seven digits (phone numbers). The store-owner observed and listened to the conversation: Boy: "Lady, Can you give me the job of cutting your lawn? Woman: (at the other end of the phone line): "I already have someone to cut my lawn.." Boy: "Lady, I will cut your lawn for half the price of the person who cuts your lawn now." Woman: I'm very satisfied with the person who is presently cutting my lawn. Boy: (with more perseverance): "Lady, I'll even sweep your curb and your sidewalk, so on Sunday you will have the prettiest lawn in all of Palm beach , Flo! rida ." Woman: No, thank you. With a smile on his face, the little boy replaced the receiver. The store-owner, who was listening to all this, walked over to the boy. Store Owner: "Son... I like your attitude; I like that positive spirit and would like to offer you a job." Boy: "No thanks, Store Owner: But you were really pleading for one. Boy: No Sir, I was just checking my performance at the job I already have. I am the one who is working for that lady, I was talking to!" This is what we call "Self Appraisal" Highly Recommended....... Good Day & Have a splendid week ahead..

These two men allegedly hurled verbal abuse at a STOMPer and banged the table, in an apparent bid to reserve the table for themselves though the table was occupied first. Said Joyce, in her email to STOMP: "We just talked about the trishaw rider bullied by these angmohs. "Well, this happened yesterday (3 Nov) to myself and a friend. "We were just resting at Isetan Scotts cinema level when two big-sized angmohs came to share our seats without the least courtesy of informing us. "Well, we do not own the seats but at least we arrived first and were occupying it. "Out of nowhere, the one on the right started to hurl abuse at my friend by saying something to him. "I think he's quite drunk butwe were so tired that we didn't even wanna talk to each other and where the hell we got energy to talk to some rude idiots who forced to occupy our table. "To my horror, this guy got very emotional and even banged on the table. "We decided to leave and well, tell him to go back to his country if he wants to be a bully. "We left and call for the security for help and were very very very disappointed that the building management can't do anything to interfere in such matters. "I called for the police and had to repeat myself three times on my exact locations, after 30mins, still none of the police turned up and the two shameless angmohs walked away just like that. "One guy told me he overheard the angmoh saying that this is a trick to occupy the table to themselves. "How stupid! Two fully grown big-sized men come out with stupid ideas to "snatch" table. "It's easy to get a PR or even be a FT here, but don't come here to bully people." STOMP has contacted Shaw Centre for a response. Watch this space for updates.