no//free//exits

There is this gigantic signboard at the Burj Dubai construction site that says something along the lines of “This construction site has had zero accidents.”

I’d like to know how Samsung Corporation defines an ‘accident’. I’m eyewitness to at least two accidents. Once, it was a worker cutting his finger off. Granted, Samsung can’t exactly be held liable for that. They have an excellent safety induction programme. You can’t blame them if workers don’t follow instructions. I’ve heard a lot of ‘rumours’ about people falling off and dying. But you can’t blame Samsung for any of that. Continue reading »

written by theplasticpoet \\ tags: Accidents, Burj Dubai

A tribute to the nearly 7,000 workers building the Burj Dubai.

Most of these are severely underpaid, earning under US$500 a month. Apprentices, also known as ‘helpers’, are paid an average of US$250 a month. Their living conditions are sad. Up to 12 people share a room, where there’s hardly any breathing space for anyone. Hygiene is horrible. The concentration labour camps are overflowing with rats.

And most of them don’t even know what accident insurance even means. Please raise your voice for the men in blue. They made this country, not bearded capitalist wizards clad in white robes.

written by theplasticpoet \\ tags: Burj Dubai, human rights, workers

I moved webhosts.

I’m back with Dreamhost again. I only left them when I did because I wanted windows hosting. I wanted to try my hand at making .net web applications. I was on a windows based hosting machine for a whole year. And it was hell. No shell/telnet access meant everything had to be done through ftp. The control panel was a pain in the ass.

I signed up for a ‘Personal plus’ account with Webhostasp. The promised 99.9% uptime is more like 25%. They have really bad DNS. I think they don’t even have a static IP. I lost data with them too. The email server took 3 days on average to route mails.

And to top it off, the support people were jerks who rarely replied. I’m lucky I got my domain transferred in time. Thankfully, that ordeal is over.

Dreamhost rocks my socks. And because I like giving and getting free things, you can sign up with Dreamhost using the promo code ‘NFXPROMO’ and save $34.40 off your bill and get another free domain. That’s 2 free domains total!

written by theplasticpoet \\ tags: hosting