Much ado about e-mails

There was an announcement that all citizens above 18 will be given free e-mail by the government.

I honestly do not see the value of giving free e-mail to citizens since there are so many e-mails available today, like Hotmail, Gmail or Yahoo mail. What made me (plus a lot of people) jump is the cost which is RM50 million. I work in the IT field and I don't think that it will cost that much even if you have a gold and diamond covered mail server.

I guess the Prime Minister realized a lot of people were jumping over the cost of 50 million, so he made this statement. Just like the heritage tower..ha ha =.=

Somebody wrote: "RM50 juta boleh membina 15 sekolah baru, beli 300 ambulans baru, gaji 1388 orang guru untuk setahun, 1 hospital pakar, 1200 buah rumah panjang baru, 1000 buah Proton Saga, 500 buah rumah kos rendah, 16000000 BUNGKUS NASI LEMAK UNTUK ORANG MISKIN.... Email? Elektrik pun masih tidak ada di sesetengah tempat di Sarawak apa gunanya email?"

Let me translate that "RM50 million can build 15 new schools, 300 new ambulance, salary for 1388 school teacher for a year, 1 specialist hospital, 1200 new long houses, 1000 new Proton Saga, 500 low cost houses, 16000000 packet of "Nasi Lemak" for the poor.E-mail. Some place in Sarawak still does not have electricity, so what is the use of email."

Someone will claim that I am short sighted, but sir, I have been involved in some Government project before. While the intention is good, the implementation sucks like hell. How many of you use your IC as the driving license. I bet that if you are unlucky, you will get fined by the police because they don't have the card reader.

And don't make me tell you about the RM100000 fax machine. A company wants to implement a website for online ordering but they don't have a back-end database to store all the information. So what happens to the online order? It will be printed and send to the procurement. 

Then there was an update.

Ha ha. Unsecured public mail like Gmail? Dear sir, Gmail use Https protocol. What encryption standard are you going to use for you mail. DES, AES, Rijndael?? Don't claim that other e-mail is unsecured when yours is not even tested yet. If its just some 16 bit encryption, excuse me while I go laugh..