Do I have something against them?

Have you seen the boasting that PTV is doing with some short advetisements on itself? One of them goes like, "If we filed copyright suits, India would go bankrupt." So, what they are referring to is the copies that Indian media makes of PTV content. Ironically, the music used in these stupid advertisements can also be heard on Indian National TV in an advertisement with some marching soldiers in it. I'm sure it must have been composed by some westerner and both the Indian and Pakistani TV are copying it without permission from the music producer. Talk about copyright infringement.
Two more instances that I can give you right away on PTV. One, the drama serial "Meray dard ko jo zuban milay." I've never seen it because it sucks but watch its trailers on PTV and notice the music from Batman Begins sound track. Another drama serial "Sukhan." Same story, I dont watch it, well, to tell you the truth, all their dramas suck so I dont watch any of them, but watch its trailer. Terminator 2 sound track music. Both, I'm sure copied without permission. And they're talking about claiming copyright? Give me a break! PTV sucks.

Well-said

This was sent to me by a friend of mine, Zubair Ahmed. It is very well written. It includes a quotation that can be summarized to: moseeqee nifaq key taraf lay jatee hay.
Think about it! Read it! All the efforts by Shoaib Mansoor and his likes will be defeated insha Allah.

PhD Annual Seminar delivered

Check this out!

PhD Annual Seminar delivered

Today, I delivered my annual PhD Seminar on "A simulation study of GELS for Ethernet over WAN." I have uploaded the presentation on my website.

Aunty jee kay farzand

Aunty can cause people to go for action.

More khisyani billi

Day before yesterday, an anchor on a news program on PTV World very happily reported that "aik nijji TV channel Geo nay report dee hay k sadr-e-mumliqat kal qom say khitab karain gay, jab k sadr-e-mumliqat actually parson qom say khitab karain gay."
That explains why their programs suck and have so many mistakes in them. They are so busy finding mistakes on other channels. I dont think there's ever been a more moron PTV management.

Khisyani billi

What's going on is very unfortunate, but I cant help but laugh at the implicit acceptance of PTV anchors in various news programs about their bias. The news programs are actually "views" programs. The anchors are not giving us the news but their views (or maybe the ones given to them by the big brother). The questions that they ask of the guests ranging from politicians to religious scholars are, really, answers, not questions. What do you expect if you say to someone, "What would you say about taking several kids and women hostage inside Lal Masjid?" I think that no matter whom they asked this question, even Mr. Ghazi, they'd get the same answer. I hope, in vain, that they'd give us just the news and nothing else.
They were also asking about the religious scholars not having done enough to resolve the situation, which is absurd. PML Q parlimantarians visited the site and staged a nice drama of showing false grief over the situation. Come on, we know exactly how much you politicians care.
There was a news report on PTV a couple of days ago that the forces were not letting paramedics go to Lal Masjid for security reasons and then the next day on the same channel, they were putting the blame on those inside of not letting the paramedics come and get the corpses and the injured.
It's funny how the government gets all concerned about humanitarian stuff on this event. How about those countless hostages in the barracks of the chaudhries, vaderas and sardars, some of them (I'm sure) in the government benches, too. How about military actions there? Arent they terrorists, too? You talk about Islam's view in the foreign media, you wouldnt be satisfied with their portrayal until they are able to show that here in Pakistan we are able to gamble, drink, dance naked, do whatever we like and no one has anything to say about it. Complete independence isnt Islam. What you want is secularism, so come out and admit it.
And, they reported that an anonymous caller had reported 12 girls on hunger strike being held hostage by the alleged terrorists. That doesnt sound authentic enough to quote let alone on national TV. We believe that it is enough for someone to be considered a liar if he/she forwards something he/she heard without verification. Hence, PTV is liar.
Is it just me, or does Ch Shujaat's visit always have dire significance? He visited Balochistan just before Bugti was assasinated. He visited Lal Masjid, came out and the forces stormed in. Doesnt it seem like he's an instrument to distract the other side before the final action?
All of this irrespective of whether this was completely a staged drama or whether what was done by the Lal Masjid or Jamia Hafsa administration was right or wrong. That is not what I am debating here.

Sacrifice

Karachi sacrificed several of its citizens once again during the recent storms for the rest of the nation. I hope everyone else learns a lesson at the expense of those deceased and take action to see if the hoardings are safe in other cities and to see what measures, if any, are in place to deal with rains and floods.

Paper accepted

Read this!

Rain

OK, so many anonymouses would be happy to know that it rained cats and dogs in Lahore and many streets and roads were flooded yesterday. I was out to get a generator for my car in a rickshaw. The rain came all of a sudden, so I conveniently didnt have a camera, but if you would kindly trust my honesty, and believe me when I say that several roads and streets were flooded. I'm sorry but the rickshaw didnt happen to pass by an underpass so I cant say if any underpass was flooded to the top or not. I wonder then, if you're right, and they are spending all of Karachi's taxes over here, then where do they go if they cant stop the streets from flooding here, too?

Rule of law

I've been around a few places in Lahore. While I've seen people caught for traffic violations on Mall Road or in Cantt area, never did I see a traffic policeman stop an offending vehicle in the DHA area. I guess they're not privileged enough to stop and ticket the Defencers.
So, they've launched a new traffic police in Lahore. Time will only tell how effective they are, but my rickshaw driver yesteday was driving diagonally on an intersection with those guys all around. I guess they were concentrating more on controlling the stopping and moving of the traffic. I'll tell you what. Until people drive straight, courteously and correctly on the road, it wouldnt matter if they follow the traffic light or not. Every day I see people driving on the right handside of the road. It doesnt matter what the reason is, it's wrong. It doesnt matter if you're trying to a shop on the right handside that is 10 meters down. You're supposed to drive on the left handside, whether or not the right handside of the road is empty. But we wouldnt take anything seriously, now, would we!

Anniversary

The other night, I was watching A-TV anniversary transmission. On came Nirma in a dance performance for the late Nusrat Fateh Ali's song "Afreen Afreen." Boy, did she save cloth? When the performers put her on a sort of board and lifted it on their shoulders you could see her entire leg naked. That's quite a thing to see on national TV. What exactly are they thinking anyway? I'm surprised no one uploaded a recording of it on YouTube.

Source code and presentations uploaded

For my session at Pakistan Developer Conference 2007, I've uploaded the source code for the demo and presentation at my website. The source code and database script are in the Downloads section and the presentation is in the Presentations section.

Nothing else to do

Like last year, this year, too, some of the volunteers at Pakistan Developer Conference were engaged and interested in only one thing: getting hooked to some other volunteer. All volunteers werent like that, though, and I am not generalizing, but a lot of people in our society are hooked only to this. It's their business, but in most of the cases, these are people who are not doing the rest of their job. Most of them are just a liability on this society, their fmailies. In my neighborhood at the "naan" shop, there are a few wooden chairs and a small wooden bench where mostly laborers and not so well off people have lunch and dinner, and a few weeks back I spotted a guy finish eating there and talking to a friend of his about a mutual trip on which they picked up some girls, and about another girl whom he is able to meet only for a very brief period of time at her medical college hostel. So, you can see that it has penetrated all social classes.
They may call it their right and freedom, but the fact remains that they are not productive for the society, are creating only evil, and are a worthless liability. "Education" just doesnt seem to do anything about it.

Once upon a time

Once upon a time, long long ago, there was a Pakistani who worked at the Graduate School office at an American university as a Graduate Assistant. The job was very important because that office deals with student grades, and a lot of other confidential information. Students have the right not to disclose their grades to anyone, even friends, and they usually didnt share their grades. This fellow, shared Mr. A's grade information with Mr. B, thereby making inappropriate use of his rights over information access. Later on, Mr. A and Mr. B had a disagreement and the argument took a certain turn in which Mr. B taunted Mr. A telling him that Mr. A had claimed to have gotten a better grade in a particular course than he actually got. Mr. A was shocked to learn that Mr. B had this information and further inquiry revelated the source of that information. Learning of this, the Graduate School banned hiring of any Pakistanis to the Graduate School.
While other nations helped their fellows achieve by lending a helping hand, the son of this great nation closed the door on a wonderful opportunity to all Pakistani students who followed him to that university. What is it with us and misuse of privileges.
I thnk that the idea of allowing comments only aims at getting praised for what wonderful work of art you produced, so I am disabling it. The blog is for me to place some of what I learn or experience. I grant you the privilege to share in what I write of my own accord. I am taking away the right to comment from you, thanks to several people, because in several instances it led to unncessary arguments. I apologise if you enjoyed posting comments to my blog.

Toshiba Tecra S2 memory card reader driver for Windows Vista

I was unable to connect my digital camera's memory stick on my Tecra S2, so I found a post on a forum, suggesting this driver. I'm giving it a shot. Let's see how it goes.

Exams over

Well, final exams for this quarter are over now. It seems this was probably the toughest final exams period I have had yet in terms of the amount of study required. It seems we covered plenty of stuff in each course. I had a lot to cover in each exam. Then there were projects and assignments in each course. Now, ahead is Summer. I need to focus on the qualifying exam right away and prepare hard for it. Also, I need to start sharpening my research focus.

Generators

A few days ago, on ATV in the program Khwaja Online. A caller complained out power outages and how the political rallies consumed so much electrical power. Khawaja replied that rallies were powered by generators and not the national grid. That reminded me of something I learnt a couple of years back while organizing an IEEE conference.
When you invite a government official to an event, a side benefit is that the local electric supply company - KESC or LESCO, for instance - is informed about the event timings and told that they should ensure power during the event. So, the event organizers dont have to arrange generators. The electric power providing company, on the other hand, has to. So, where does the expense of that generator go if KESC/LESCO bears it?

"Main aap say kena chaata hoon...."

Read a few reports published in Pakistani newspapers referenced by BBC.

This is part of an email by Vadim Antonov on an emailing list to discuss computer networking related issues:

(BTW, one of the most popular little toys I made was a thingie which did domain name-based e-mail routing over UUCP - not by tracking global topology maps a la pathalias, but by insertion of the next hop lookup step at every transit point. No more stuck e-mail trying to get along a precomputed path which has one hop down. That thingie was a smash hit in the place where phone lines used to be so notoriously flaky that every rain caused a singificant portion of them to get so bad that modems couldn't connect.)

Notice that he is referring to a long back time and the fact that we still have that problem in Pakistan every so often, whether or not it rains. Modems fail to connect. So, what have our elders, incharge of PTCL, for instance, for so many decades been doing? Why is that despite posting revenues, despite overcharging us consumers and trunk connection customers, they were unable to deploy a useful POTS?

The mentality of a government employee, ingrained deep in the brain is how to use facilities, how to use the rules and regulations to their benefit and against the poor person on the other side of the window. If and when they are held accountable, they are suspended from duty, with full pay, and asked to do nothing all day, but sit at a certain place in the office while the inquiry is conducted. At the end, they are patted on the back and returned to active duty at the same or different place. Wouldnt that person be encouraged to continue?