Quaid-i-Azam

To achieve your own dreams it takes a lifetime but to achieve the dream of millions, it’s a feat only a few can perform in the history of mankind. And Jinnah was one of them. And to achieve that one has to rise above the fear and display courage. The ability and skills which he manifested in the process of creation of Pakistan and the fight he carried in all quarters, with reason and logic to bring the dream of a lifetime for millions of souls was unsurpassable. We will always remain in debt to this man and those millions of sacrifices.

The best way to sum-up his life would be in words of Stanley Wolpert: ‘Few individuals significantly alter the course of history. Fewer still modify the map of the world. Hardly anyone can be credited with creating a nation-state. Mohammad Ali Jinnah did all three.’

Can you feel the pain...

I feel the wind blowing again
telling me that summer is goning

I've seen the world going apart
its my love that stood tall again

My faith is what I'm left with
dusting my soul from bottom again

Looking for the freedom which I've lost
reasoning myself that shackles will break again

Late last night, when world was sleeping
I dreamed my love calling me again

Can you feel the pain, I am going through again.

US President: Who would be better for tech, McCain or Obama?

In terms of rating the candidates on my top five issues, I would give John McCain the nod for being the stronger candidate in R&D tax cuts and H1B Visas, while I think Barack Obama would be better when it comes to Net Neutrality and Green tech. That leaves Broadband development as the tie breaker.

Obama has a broader vision for broadband by thinking of it as the next standard utility, like electricity and the telephone, but McCain has a track record of smaller legislative victories that have helped drive progress. Ultimately, I think this issue hinges on which candidate will better foster an atmosphere of true competition in the broadband business, and neither of these two inspire a lot of confidence there.

McCain thinks the free market alone will solve most of the problems and Obama relies too heavily on government regulation and intervention, when what’s needed is just-enough government regulation to ensure free market competition.

However, since McCain has presided over massive consolidation in the broadband market, and Obama is more likely to bring back and enforce the Clinton-era 1996 Telecommunications Act, which forced the telecoms to open up their lines to smaller resellers, Obama wins this one by a nose and that also gives him the overall nod as the candidate that could potentially have a stronger impact on the technology industry.

There are also a few other secondary factors that help tilt this in Obama’s direction:
- If elected he plans to appoint the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
- His first sponsored bill that became law was “Google for Government,” which shows his interest in technology
- In a recent interview Obama said he’d like to take what he and his team have learned about using technology in the campaign and apply it to government. He was primarily referring to electronic communications.
- The fact that he’s talked about making electronic medical records a key part of his health care plan (as a way to drive efficiency) shows that he generally views technology as a powerful enabler

This is not an official TechRepublic endorsement of Senator Obama. I would not expect anyone — even techies — to base their vote on the next U.S. leader solely on these issues. However, for those of us who make a living in the technology space and have so much invested in its future development, we should all be well-informed about where the candidates stand on the legislative, regulatory, and investment issues that will dramatically affect the technology industry in the critical years ahead.

NOTE: Source taken from ZDNet.

Apple beats estimates; credits iPhone sales

Apple reported fiscal fourth quarter earnings of $1.14 billion, or $1.26 per share, on revenue of $7.9 billion, beating Wall Street estimates of $1.11 per share on $8.05 billion in revenue. (statement) The company credited the strong quarter partly on iPhone sales - “We sold more phones than RIM,” CEO Steve Jobs said in a statement, about Research in Motion, maker of the Blackberry.

Still, investors are looking ahead at the holiday season, asking if a new line of iPods and a refresh of the MacBook line can counter the global economic slump and uncertain consumer confidence. The company provided a wide range for its guidance, putting revenue at $9 billion to $10 billion and earnings per share to $1.06 to $1.35. In a statement, company CFO Peter Oppenheimer said, “Looking ahead, visibility is low and forecasting is challenging, and as a result we are going to be prudent in predicting the December quarter.”

In the same quarter last year, Apple reported earnings of $904 million, or $1.01 per share, on revenue of $6.22 billion. Gross margins were 34.7 percent, up from 33.6 percent for the same quarter last year.

CEO Steve Jobs made a rare appearance on the conference call and addressed the folks on the call with his take on the success of the iPhone, growth of the App Store and his general thoughts on the downturn. “We are not economists,” Jobs said, noting that the company also isn’t sure of the impact of the bumpy economic conditions. “We read the same newspapers you do.”
Other highlights from the quarter:

- The company sold 6.9 million iPhones, taking the company passed its goal of 10 million sold for 2008 - with two months left in the year. The company said iPhone is now 39 percent of the total business.
- Apple shipped 2.61 million Mac computers, a 21 percent increase over the year-ago quarter. It set a company record for a single quarter.
- More than 11 million iPods were sold, up eight percent from a year ago. The company said it was record for a non-holiday quarter. It’s market share for portable music players remained above the 70 percent mark.
- The iTunes store has more than 65 million active accounts and a catalog of 8.5 million titles. It has just added more television shows, renewed its content deal with NBC and added high-def programming.
- The company has $25 billion in cash and zero debt. In a call with analysts, Jobs hinted that the financial position gives the company the “ability to invest our way through this downturn.”
- The iPhone App store expects to see its 200 millionth application downloaded by tomorrow, 102 days since the July launch.

Shares of Apple were down 7 percent in regular trading, closing at $91.49. The stock mostly recovered in after-hours trading, jumping to more than 7 percent in active trading.

NOTE: Resource taken from ZDNet.

Gartner ITxpo 2008: The top 10 IT products

This article was co-authored by Bill Detwiler, TechRepublic’s Head Technology Editor.

Over 100 IT vendors did their dog-and-pony show for the 2008 ITxpo at the Gartner Symposium in Orlando on October 13-16. TechRepublic scoured the show floor and came up with our list of top 10 most important products.

Gartner Symposium ITxpo is now one of the largest and most influential trade shows in the IT industry due to its focus on IT decision-makers, Gartner’s popular thought leadership sessions such as its list of the top 10 technologies to watch over the next three years, and its keynotes from top technology executives such as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Cisco CEO John Chambers.

On the show floor, Bill Detwiler and I looked at nearly every one of the vendors in order to find the solutions with the most potential to impact businesses and IT departments. We put a special emphasis on products that were new within the last couple months or are scheduled to be released within the next couple months. In a few cases, the most interesting products were not new, per se, but were new to us and not as well known across the industry.

See Top 10 IT products: http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=10502&tag=nl.e539 .

NOTE: Source taken from ZDNet

OK, now OpenOffice is definitely good enough

There is a reason that the OpenOffice.org 3.0 servers are struggling to keep up with demand. OO.org 3.0 really is a serious upgrade over version 2.4 and makes NeoOffice irrelevant for Mac OS X users (previously, OpenOffice only worked within X11; While NeoOffice did a great job porting OO.org to native OS X, OO.org 3.0 works out of the box in OS X as a native Aqua application).

Last week I asked if OpenOffice was good enough. The general consensus? OO.org is good enough to start a flame war, but we’re not really sure if it’s good enough to be a serious competitor to MS Office.

Now that OO.org 3.0 is out, I’m having a much tougher time seeing both sides of the issue here (I actually like Office 2007/2008, by the way; I think they’re slick, well-polished, and highly functional). I had never liked the OpenOffice equation editor; this version brings a very nice graphical and text-based hybrid editor to us math teachers. Mail merge was clunky in OO.org; this version brings a mail merge wizard and improved label templates. Outline numbering tended to be a bit kludgy for notetaking in OO; this version improves the stability and interface of outlining.

Annotations are now incredibly easy to add (Insert, Note) and Office 2007/2008 formats are supported across the board. While Microsoft has dumped VBA support in Office 2008, OO.org users can run Visual Basic scripting, as well as Python and Javascript.

I’m not actually bashing MS Office here. It’s a great suite and they still have something that OpenOffice lacks: Publisher. However, Publisher was lacking on the Mac platform anyway and *nix users haven’t had access to MS Office (including Publisher) without some serious Wine work. Speaking of Access, OpenOffice continues to bring a solid database offering to all platforms. Is it as powerful as Access? I don’t think so (let’s face it - Access 2007 rocks). However, Mac, *nix, and Windows users can all interchange databases and use OO.org Base as a front end to a variety of data sources (including MySQL).

OpenOffice.org is not a clone of Office 2007 (good call, Sun). It’s a full-featured suite that gives us everything we need from MS Office and the world of productivity software while keeping the bottom line quite a bit more reasonable (you don’t get any more reasonable than free).

Yes, OO.org has been good enough for a long time; the latest release should leave little doubt for any users who had been on the fence.

NOTE: Resource taken from ZDNet

Why QA is important?

Quality assurance, or QA for short, refers to planned and systematic production processes that provide confidence in a product's suitability for its intended purpose. It is a set of activities intended to ensure that products (goods and/or services) satisfy customer requirements in a systematic, reliable fashion. QA cannot absolutely guarantee the production of quality products, unfortunately, but makes this more likely.

Two key principles characterise QA: "fit for purpose" (the product should be suitable for the intended purpose) and "right first time" (mistakes should be eliminated). QA includes regulation of the quality of raw materials, assemblies, products and components; services related to production; and management, production and inspection processes.

It is important to realize also that quality is determined by the intended users, clients or customers, not by society in general: it is not the same as 'expensive' or 'high quality'. Even lowly bottom-of-the-range goods can be considered quality items if they meet a market need.

Total quality control

Deep analysis of QA practices and premisses used about them is the most necessary inspection control of all in cases where, despite statistical quality control techniques or quality improvements implemented, sales decrease.

The major problem which leads to a decrease in sales was that the specifications did not include the most important factor, “What the specifications have to state in order to satisfy the customer requirements?”.

The major characteristics, ignored during the search to improve manufacture and overall business performance were:

• Reliability
• Maintainability
• Safety
• Strength

As the most important factor had been ignored, a few refinements had to be introduced:

1. Marketing had to carry out their work properly and define the customer’s specifications.
2. Specifications had to be defined to conform to these requirements.
3. Conformance to specifications i.e. drawings, standards and other relevant documents, were introduced during manufacturing, planning and control.
4. Management had to confirm all operators are equal to the work imposed on them and holidays, celebrations and disputes did not affect any of the quality levels.
5. Inspections and tests were carried out, and all components and materials, bought in or otherwise, conformed to the specifications, and the measuring equipment was accurate, this is the responsibility of the QA/QC department.
6. Any complaints received from the customers were satisfactorily dealt with in a timely manner.
7. Feedback from the user/customer is used to review designs.
8. Consistent data recording and assessment and documentation integrity.
9. Product and/or process change management and notification.

If the specification does not reflect the true quality requirements, the product's quality cannot be guaranteed. For instance, the parameters for a pressure vessel should cover not only the material and dimensions but operating, environmental, safety, reliability and maintainability requirements.

NOTE: Source taking from Wikipedia

Political Harmony... is it insight?

Pakistan has faced political crisis from the day of its inception; the Quaid died just over an year after independence, the first prime minister was murdered in 2 years time and then started the pendulum of one government taking oath and within an year another takes its place. It continued till Ayub Khan took over. In his 11 year, there was political stability but he wasn't a elected member so the progress made in his regime reduced it to none - at least politically.

Then came another civilian role and then a military take over by Gen. Zia (who many in Pak Army believe don't even deserve to be even promoted to Major level). Anyways, his mysterious death opened the way for Benazir government and then another to-and-fro motion of regime change started which ended with Gen. Musharaf taking over as role of Chief Executive of Pakistan.

Look at the irony of this country; our military governments were more stable than our political governments...

Now after learning a lot from their mistakes - both PPPP and PML(N) have realize that from there conflict only one organization takes the benefit (though at least that's what they think) . So now there survival in longer run is only possible if they don't give any reason for people of Pakistan or Pak Army to get annoyed with their policy. Unless and until our politicians, beaurocrats and military don't feel that their prime responsibility is to serve the people not their personal interests; only then we can see progress and political harmony.

September 6 - Defense Day

I am bit confused today; today is September 6 and officially it's defense day of Pakistan which I've celebrated throughout my childhood with the high spirits of defending my homeland from all evils coming from inside or outside. And how can I (we) forget the war heroes who sacrifice their lives for our better tomorrow (they were my childhood heroes and today is no different).

I'm not writing this blog to honor those who fought for defense back in September 6, 1965 but another political defense day approaching us today. Yes, today our assemblies will decide next president of Pakistan - the symbol of federation, unity. The tragedy is one who was considered to be most corrupt in Pakistan almost 10 years back, will going to win this election. I voted for PPPP in this year election but never wanted Zardari to contest for President; he is no match to his predecessor - Gen(R) Pervaiz Musharaf.

I am not sure how to celebrate this day; my cherished defense victory or prepare myself for another defense day?

Chrome hits with DoS vulnerability...

Whoa! Google Chrome has crashed. Restart now? While Google’s Chrome team is cheering, Rishi Narang from Evil Fingers is typing and releasing a proof of concept for a denial of service vulnerability that is successfully crashing the Chrome browser with all tabs. According to Narang’s advisory :

“An issue exists in how chrome behaves with undefined-handlers in chrome.dll version 0.2.149.27. A crash can result without user interaction. When a user is made to visit a malicious link, which has an undefined handler followed by a ’special’ character, the chrome crashes with a Google Chrome message window “Whoa! Google Chrome has crashed. Restart now?”. It crashes on “int 3″ at 0×01002FF3 as an exception/trap, followed by “POP EBP” instruction when pointed out by the EIP register at 0×01002FF4.”

Nothing’s impossible the impossible just takes a little longer.

Whenever a new product is in its introduction stage, it would logically attract a lot of attention from security researchers trying to a make a point that it’s vulnerable, and that some of the vulnerabilities are pretty trivial. For instance, yesterday David Maynor from Errata Security pin pointed possibilities for exploitation in Google’s Chrome, saying that :

“Google just released Chrome, their own web browser. We decided to run it through Looking Glass and it doesn’t look half bad. They at least have ASLR enabled on a few of their libraries, no NX though. Chrome is not as bad as some apps I have seen but that is not saying much.”

What’s important though, is whether or not the browser release would also start attracting the attention of cybercrimals. Being anything but old fashioned, they too do their homework and take into consideration the market share of a particular browser in order to increase the impact of exploiting it. Consequently, for the time being the level of exploitability of Google’s Chrome is right after Opera’s from the perspective of the malicious attacker taking into consideration Chrome’s non-existent market share.

Would the level of exploitability change? In the fist quarter of 2009, Google would presumably release stats of the number of people who downloaded Chrome, demonstrating nothing else but the introduction stage of their browser. The question is, how many of those who downloaded it would actually stick with it, and would companies embrace it if it does gets popular enough, potentially increasing the exploitability level of any upcoming vulnerabilities?

Considering the fact that according to public statistics of usage share of web browsers, IE6 users are just as many as IE7 ones, converting from Firefox or IE to Google’s Chrome is not going to happen overnight.

Note: Source taken from ZDNet blog.

Pakistan Richest...

An email is circling these days about the richest Pakistanis ( http://www.teeth.com.pk/blog/2007/12/08/pakistans-rich-list-of-2008 ) and first thing you'll notice after going through with this list is not how they've struggle to achieve this but how easily they might have done that... I am not suggesting that it was walk in a park for them but reality is, they got all this money not because they worked hard with dedication and honesty, or there was a vision behind all this...

The lot includes Politicians, smugglers, land mafia owners... Not all of them are corrupt, many in this list are from honorable families (meaning those who've done something for this country as well) like Muhammad Ali Habib family, he gave Quaid-i-Azam Rs 80 Million cheque in 1948 when Pakistan government was penniless owing to delay in transfer of Pakistan’s share of Rs. 750 million by the Reserve Bank of India.

There are other good names as well but reader like me, will immediately realize that why so many politician or corrupts are listed there, why?

Musharaf, not leaving Pakistan

Another question which was raised after Pres. Musharaf resignation on August 18, how soon he will be leaving Pakistan like all other premiers? So far, my predictions about him never have gone wrong except the time he resigned. Maybe I was the first one who suggested in a gathering when he was promoted as COAS of Pakistan that if Nawaz Sharif try to remove him then he will not going to sit back like his predecessor, he will going to kick back and kick back strong.

I didn't predict this because I knew him very well but for two reasons. I never wanted Army to keep quite, if he tries this misadventure again and secondly, I've learned from somewhere he was a trained SSG and likes action... And what happened afterwards is now part of history as well.

The irony of this country is that whenever a coup takes place or new government comes (we curse the old and put welcome the new with flowers), moreover we put such high ladder of expectations for them that just after couple of years or say months, we start criticism them for not doing anything.

Anyways, my main topic is whether he will leave Pakistan or not... My opinion, I doubt if he will.

Is Zardari making right choice?

In some on my past blogs, I clearly stated earlier when there were rumors of Zardari putting his name as Prime Minister of Pakistan, and I was certain that this move will never help PPPP as party because the role played in India by Congress leader - Sonia Ghandi is increasing the popularity of her party by working behind the scene and strengthening party base throughout India.

Though one can not match the positions in which Zardari is currently in; there were over 30 active cases running on different courts in Pakistan including charges of murder, corruption and mass misconduct during Benazir two terms of PM. Ironically, all cases were made during Nawaz Sharif government. All political cases were withdrawn after introduction of NRO and only thing which can save him from anyone challenging this presidential order is, if becomes the president of Pakistan.

As Supreme Court of Pakistan can not call President, so any case which might come in-front of Chaudery Ifithar (once he is reinstated) challenging NRO or re-opening of Zardari cases, it will be disqualify itself as no hearing can be conducted on sitting President.

Whether this is a good move or not? Whether he deserves the presidency or not? Without going in to any details, he should have put PPPP and Pakistan's interest over his own...

My President Resigned Today...

Bad day for me and for my country!

President Pervez Musharaf resigned today, I wasn't expecting that but at bottom of my heart knew, he was left with no option but to resign (otherwise he would have invited more destabilization economically and politically). Many in Pakistan were jubilant on his decision but for me, it wasn't. He has done more good to Pakistan than any other politician or army ruler (except for its founder).

My best wishes to him and hope that he will not leave Pakistan and face all charges laid against him. He was a true spirit behind Pakistan's successful economical and political strength shown in last 8 years. He is a fighter and let history remember him like that as well.

Long Live Pakistan!

Restoration of Judges

Currently Pakistan is going through some strange times, there is continuous struggle of lawyers against Nov 3 President Musharaf active of removing Justice Iftikhar. Today a long march which started 3 days back from Karachi reached Islamabad. Most of political parties participated in it (incl. PML(N), PTI, JI), theoretically the long march was expected to be the biggest in Islamabad's history as three major political parties were fully supporting the lawyer's initiative but only 50-60K people participated in it, though people came from all walks of life, age and area.

PPP never supported this movement as they've different plans for restoration, without going into the details of it. I think PPP would never like to give PML-N credit for judges’ restoration that's why they're keeping distance. They want everyone to realize that without PPP, they can not achieve any of object set by any party. In other words, they're the boss.

Education - does it bring any change in life?

Many suggest that education changes the way one live or at least think. An educated man is more responsible and has awareness of his rights. He can play more productive and constructive role in building himself, his family, society, city and ultimately the country. He will respect other's right and can stand by his own. He is tolerant and progressive by nature, who respects other's religion like his own. And above all, he is more humane.

If education plays such an important role then why it’s not free in our country? Why education standards are deploring with time and why education is polarizing in faster pace than ever? Why books are no more part of our lives?

Why we take good education for high salaries but not for knowledge?

Democratic dream ticket... Is Obama aiming for it?

At last Hillary Clinton has conceded defeat but only after everyone convinced her that there is no way she can be nominated from Democratic ticket as Presidential candidate. Though she still claim to have 18 million popular votes (which is in fact the highest count of all times).

In start of 2008, most of democrats were in favor of dream ticket of Hillary and Obama but after the continuous bashing of former on later, which benefited the Republican camp enormously, as John McCain benefited from Hillary - Obama mocking/attacking each other in every state to win maximum delegates. The result at the end, they lost heavy points to McCain.

The national polls indicate that Obama has almost 2 points lead on McCain, and chances are that he will further strengthen his position as time progress. And most of swing states this time might also favor Democrats. Obama is gaining popularity after getting endorsements from renowned US political figures like Kennedy family, Jon Wiener, John Edwards, Shaun Kenney, Senator Edward Kennedy etc.

Though the race could become close run at the end, as there are red-neck states in US, who can never accept a black American president (least a woman).

Obama has some difficult choices, if he offers Hillary Vice President ticket, he then takes a serious risk of a strong Hillary presence/lobby and conspiracy theories but on the other hand, it adds experience and a strong resume for democrat bid for white house.

Obama might ask her as running mate, if he don't get a good VP candidate that assures both attracting conservative and women voters (right now Hillary is the best option).

When aid becomes reason for abuse

Today it was reported that many of humanitarian and UN peacekeepers are sexually abusing small children even age of six in several war-ravaged areas including Burundi, Ivory Coast, Sudan etc. It is the stage when desperate individuals including children go beyond reasonable ethical conduct to get one night food.

These abuses were reported numerous times in past by NGO's like Oxfam and Save the Children, and only couple of times peacekeepers were jailed for this misconduct. I seriously doubt that one or two years imprisonment would do any good or send a loud warning to all others working under UN/NGO umbrella.

Pakistani soldiers have worked in numerous UN missions and they've left a strong mark of high professionalism and character in minds of these desperate people.

A punishment of priest can not be same as common man.

10 reasons for IT failure

Readers of this blog know IT initiatives generally fail for business, organizational, or cultural reasons. Sure, technology screw-ups occur all the time, but that’s one of the realities to be managed. Success or failure ultimately depends on how project leadership manages the full range of technical- and non-technical issues.

Blogger and enterprise architect, Mike Kavis, who’s obviously been through some battles, has created ten guidelines describing critical areas of weakness in many projects:


1. Poor Communication. Enterprise projects usually impact a large amount of people. This requires constant communications to all levels of people throughout the organization. A strong communication strategy can help with this.

2. Underestimating or ignoring impact of change. This is another way of saying poor change management. People need to know WIIFM (what’s in it for me). Resistance to change can kill any project. Your initiative must have a champion who carries a lot of clout.

3. Lack of Leadership. IT Leadership requires excellence in three key areas: Technology, Business, and People. If the leadership is missing any of the three components you are doomed.

4. Lack of strong executive sponsorship. For these projects to succeed you must have somebody high up in the organization with a lot of clout.

5. Poor project management. Often, large enterprise initiatives have a ton of logistics that need to be identified and managed accordingly.

6. Poor Planning. This could also fall into a category of unrealistic expectations. Initiatives like SOA require a well thought out strategy. Many IT shops do not have the patience for this and rush into their project head first without a clue of how to actually accomplish their goals.

7. Trying to do it cheap. Organizations want it all, but they don’t want to invest the time and money. I have seen many projects get completed using this strategy, but they almost always run over budget, are late, are missing many features, and have many various quality or process issues due to the quick-n-dirty approach.

8. Lack of technical knowledge. You wouldn’t ask me to remove your appendix so why would you have somebody with little or no knowledge of the technology at hand lead your enterprise initiative.

9. Lack of sound business case. You can get all of the other issues right but if your solution has no business context then you are wasting your time.

10. Poor vendor management. Somebody hires a high priced group of consultants and let’s them run wild. You should make sure that what they build meets your requirements, your standards, your needs, and your timelines.

Whenever I blog this kind of list, some commenters invariably say the whole thing is obvious common sense and therefore not worth consideration. If so, then why do so many projects fail precisely due to items on this list? Complex projects are hard to get right, which is why IT failure remains a serious issue.

Successful leaders create project success on the foundation of skillfully managing people, process, and technology. While this perspective may appear obvious, the experience and wisdom needed to make IT projects successful is not common at all.

NOTE: Resource taken from ZDNET blog.

Check your Gen. Knowledge!

Even if u answer **five** questions its great...Feel proud...

1. What programming language is GOOGLE developed in?
2. What is the expansion of YAHOO?
3. What is the expansion of ADIDAS?
4. Expansion of Star as in Star TV Network?
5. What is expansion of "ICICI?"
6. What does "baker's dozen" signify?
7. The 1984-85 season. 2nd ODI between India and Pakistan at Sialkot - India 210/3 withVengsarkar 94*. Match abandoned. Why?
8. Who is the only man to have written the National Anthems for two different countries?
9. From what four word expression does the word `goodbye` derive?
10. How was Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu better known?
11. Name the only other country to have got independence on Aug 15th?
12. Why was James Bond Associated with the Number 007?
13. Who faced the first ball in the first ever One day match?
14. Which cricketer played for South Africa before it was banned from internationalcricket and later represented Zimbabwe ?
15. The faces of which four Presidents are carved at Mt.Rushmore?
16. Which is the only country that is surrounded from all sides by only one country(other than Vatican )?
17. Which is the only sport which is not allowed to play left handed?


HERE ARE THE ANSWERS

1. Google is written in Asynchronous java-script and XMLor its acronym Ajax ..
2. Yet Another Hierarchy of Officious Oracle
3. ADIDAS- All Day I Dream About Sports
4. Satellite Television Asian Region
5. Industrial credit and Investments Corporation of India
6. A baker's dozen consists of 13 items - 1 more than the items in a normal dozen
7. That match was abandoned after people heard the news of Indira Gandhi being killed.
8. Rabindranath Tagore who wrote national anthem for two different countries one is Indian's National anthem and another one is for Bangladesh- (Amar Sonar* *Bangla)
9. Goodbye comes from the ex-pression: 'god be with you'.
10. Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu is none other Mother Teresa.
11. South Korea ..
12. Because 007 is the ISD code for Russia (or the USSRas it was known during the cold war)
13. Geoffrey Boycott
14. John Traicos
15. George WashingtonThomas JeffersonTheodore Rooseveltand Abraham Lincoln
16. Lesotho surrounded from all sides by South Africa ..
17. Polo.

NOTE: resource taken from an email attachement.

Wants to be popular?

You enter in a fast food restaurant; a waiter immediately approaches you with a smile, and walks you to the table of your choice. Within couple of minutes 2-3 more waiters come to your table to ask if you need anything. All the time there, you get special attention and care... Why? coz you pay them more tip than other customers do :).

In past I had discussion about loyalties and being a positive thinker by nature, I always thought that true loyalties/respect can not be bought. Now with the passage of time, I've realize there is no concept of purity in this world, everyone has a price tag attached to his loyalties and friendship. It's all about at what price he is willing to sell himself. No matter who is he and what he do, you can buy loyalties, make friends, win hearts, change opinions, bring change in society... meaning you can have anything if you've enough courage/money to get it...

China to lead global Internet traffic... Prospect of web hosting?

The latest statistical figures released by the state-owned China Internet Network Information Center reveals that China is due to surpass the United States as the nation with the most Internet users, some time this year.

The figure reported by the Chinese government institution was a 53 percent jump from 137 million Chinese Internet users reported at this time last year. The Sydney Morning Herald reports: China says number of Internet users rises to 210 million, could overtake US this year

- “Currently China’s online population is about 50 million less than that of the United States and is the world’s second-largest,” the agency, also known as CNNIC, said on its Web site. “CNNIC forecasts that (China) will become the largest online country in 2008,” it said.

- The U.S. Census Bureau said last year that about 218 million of the country’s 310 million people used the Internet.

- China promotes Internet use for education and business but tries to block the public from seeing material deemed pornographic or that opposes communist rule.

This latest figure only consolidates the fact that China is a very ripe market for web hosting. With a population of 1,323,128,240 [over 1.3 billion], China currently ranks as the most populous country in the world with the USA coming 3rd after India. China’s current population is 19.83% of the world’s total population whilst that of the USA is 4.55%. Economists are predicting that China and India would be the world’s next super-powers in as soon as ten years time, going by the strong annual economic growth the two countries have been marking over the years.

Having realised all the above-stated points, many of the leading dot-com companies have opened shop in China to reap from the economic windfall: Google, Paypal, ebay, Microsoft, Yahoo etc
Now, China is not exactly a virgin market if the figures by WebHosting.info are anything to go by. Chinese web hosts share 2,735,314 domains amongst themselves whilst Chinese ICANN-accredited registrars have registered 3,275,345 generic domain names.

China stands at 5th position; followed by US, Germany, UK, Canada on country-wise highest number of registered domains. Six out of top ten countries are from non-english speaking regions and for most of global web hosting companies / control panels, it leave them with little chances in domestic penetration unless they localize their services/product or partner with some regional distributor.

The point is simple: web hosting firms in other parts of the world that can target a section of their marketing website at the Chinese population stand to reap economic benefits from China’s fast-growing Internet population. A website with a Chinese language version would be a first step though its important to point that many educated Chinese individuals can handle the English language fairly well.

Note: Major source taken from David's blog in WebHostingSearch.

Kasey Chambers - she is good

I am not a huge fan of country music but sometimes it really inspires my wit. Just got the chance to listen Kasey Chambers music today on Youtube and I was ecstatic :) Simple music is put into wonderful composition and her heavy-toned voice was going with every line of her lyrics. Though she might have not made any big records but I'm sure, she has many of silent admirers like me.

Here are few of her singles:

- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCictKFIIoo&feature=related
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQUggrlX_Kk&feature=related
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5jWvEwlHfQ&feature=related

India, expanding its global reach

India's Tata Motors said on Wednesday it had bought British luxury icons Jaguar and Land Rover from struggling United States carmaker Ford for $2.3-billion as it expands its global reach.

The all-cash deal is part of Tata's efforts to grow outside Asia, but analysts have questioned how the Indian firm -- maker of the Nano, the world's cheapest car -- will absorb the two high-end marques into its operations. "We are very pleased at the prospect of Jaguar and Land Rover being a significant part of our automotive business," Tata group chairperson Ratan Tata said, pledging to keep the identities of the famous brands "intact".

Tata Motors, part of the sprawling tea-to-outsourcing Tata Group empire, said the "total amount to be paid in cash" would be $2.3-billion and added Ford would contribute up to about $600-million to the Jaguar and Land Rover pension plans.

The purchase, which has been the subject of speculation for months, comes amid an economic downturn that has put the squeeze on demand for prestige vehicles. In January, Tata unveiled the Nano at a price of $2 500, hoping that the no-frills auto could revolutionise travel for millions in India and elsewhere.

But with the acquisition, Tata would be in the unusual position of making the cheapest car in the world as well as some of the most expensive.

Of late, tough global economic conditions have put sales of expensive cars into reverse. US and European sales of Jaguar fell by over 30%, year-on-year, during the first two months of 2008.
"Both brands are already experiencing declining sales," said Aniket Mhatre, auto analyst at Mumbai brokerage Prabhudas Lilladher.

Interestingly, just this year Forbes included 3 Indians in top 10 richest individuals. Is india becoming a global economic power? The question for Pakistan is either to work with Indian companies to benefit from their experience or go all out confrontational and competitive alternative for foreign investors.

If industry is to grow here in Pakistan then government need to participate and indulge itself into supporting > expanding local industry to the position that they compete with international brands as a financial muscle.

The end of Software... Part II

That’s a p-r-e-t-t-y big statement which I roughly translate as: “Get lost.” And while I wonder at the wisdom of engaging in what Jevon calls a ’schoolyard brawl’ with Microsoft, the reaction indicates that Microsoft is determined to protect its turf. But will the IBM/Microsoft approach, based as it is in the past, be enough to win the day?

I’m going out on a limb here because many of my colleagues look at history and think it kinda repeats itself. I disagree. As Limbert says, startups are the future winners. While today, the top slots in the enterprise market may be the same as they were 10 years ago, let’s not forget that Facebook (as an example) came from nowhere in 2006 to dominate the news in 2007 and gathered the now fabled $15 billion valuation. Microsoft may be aligned to Facebook on advertising but that leaves Facebook owning the customer relationship. Duh? Google went from strength to strength and many believe the war for dominance of the ‘internet cloud’ is already over with Google declared a winner. So picture this:

The startups who are doing the outside in stuff as outlined above become established in 2008, deepening their understanding of how relationships are created and sustained. One of them realizes that the people centric principles delivering CRM 2008 value can be equally applied to Social Capital Management. In other words, they can supplant today’s Human Capital Management solutions. What happens then to so-called core business processes? I think SAP knows, even if it might struggle to get there. I’m not convinced that IBM, Oracle or Microsoft are remotely close. Libert most certainly knows even if the eventual 800lb gorilla’s identity is yet to be revealed. As the old saw goes: we live in interesting times.

Note: Source taken from ZDNet blog.

The end of software... Part 1

First, we have the mega vendors who think they ‘own’ the enterprise but have little clue what they’re doing when it comes to providing community style collaborative software. As Barry Libert, chairman of Mzinga said to me: “Does Microsoft have a relationship with me? Do any of the ‘monster’ vendors?” Second, we have the startups who are largely making their money by selling social media style solutions to marketers. While the two solution sets may look the same from the outside, they are being bought in fundamentally different ways and are setting up a tension that today is barely felt but which will have a disruptive effect on the software buying patterns of the future.

“IT is largely taking the view that Microsoft Sharepoint and Lotus Connections are the way to go. In some cases, startup vendors that could offer a much faster time to value are automatically dismissed.” In other words, IT shops are making sure the status quo is firmly maintained. But if you believe Libert, then this is entirely the wrong strategy because at heart, both Microsoft and IBM are offering behomoth frameworks that are file based, require development and are not people centric.

Where the startups fail but where the incumbents succeed is in identifying a specific value proposition within specific industries. His view is that Sharepoint will be a ‘big winner in the next five years.’ If the amount of noise being made by Microsoft is indicative, then it should be a winner. But…he also says: “Sharepoint deployments are horrendous and I really don’t know why people put up with them.” I do. They keep IT shops busy.

It’s time for IT to leave the ivory tower and become part of the decision-making culture of the business. The entire notion of IT as being somehow separate, or having independent goals from, the non-technical parts of an enterprise is absolutely ridiculous.

Doug Merritt, who runs SAP Labs who said that: “Taking a FriendFeed approach will tell me much more about potential employees in the due diligence phase of hiring than I can get from HR.” Did I hear a light bulb go on? Apparently so.

I’m thinking that SAP is realizing that it could get much closer to the millions of people who use its software rather than the IT shops that buy their stuff. The challenge, which Merritt thinks doesn’t get solved for another 2-5 years, is how companies like SAP adapt their software design strategies to accommodate this new reality. Enter the startups.

Cont.

Note: Source taken from ZDNet blog.

Data center as a service

Hewlett-Packard on Monday plans to launch an effort to offer data center as a service to large enterprise customers.

The move is notable for the following reasons:

- Cloud infrastructure has been primarily focused on small- to mid-sized businesses that have been leveraging companies like Amazon Web Services.
- Large enterprises can wrap in HP’s service along with existing outsourcing contracts.
- The economy is slowing and IT managers may be able to expand their infrastructure by shifting from the capital spending line (build your own data center) to the operating expense line (a service subscription).

HP is betting that its service will gain traction among customers trying to create one instance of SAP as they migrate to SAP 6.0.

HP calls the effort Adaptive Infrastructure as a Service (AIaaS), but it’s basically a data center you can subscribe to. The service will be powered by HP’s existing data centers. HP has been consolidating its own data centers and plans to cook them down to six when the consolidation is done. U.S. customers will subscribe to HP’s new paired data centers in Atlanta (the one HP CIO Randy Mott runs the business on) and European customers will have a dedicated facility outside of Paris, says Pat Adamiak, vice president of portfolio, marketing and alliances at HP Services.

Adamiak outlined the four flavors of its data center as a service lineup optimized for various situations a large company would face. Each service configuration, which promises 99.9 percent uptime like Amazon does, has been tested with unnamed customers. Among the services:

- A compute intensive data center service for companies that need a lot of processing power, say oil companies that need geothermal analysis and content companies that need to render movies.
- A version that is optimized for SAP 6.0. I’d reckon that this configuration could be a popular choice. Many companies have three or four flavors of SAP in their shops and they are all trying to get to the latest version in one instance. There are a lot of hardware planning costs that go along with such a move. By cutting over to and SAP 6.0 rollout with a data center as a service approach you could save time and money since you could in theory lop off older SAP instances.
- A service optimized for Microsoft Exchange with uptime, failover and archiving.
- A data center as a service optimized for Windows, Unix and Linux. Under this arrangement, customers would bring their own apps since “a lot of customers like to control the application,” says Adamiak.

The initial game plan for HP is to target large companies, but eventually the company is likely to move downstream.

Note: Source taken from ZDNet blog.

Democracy - new beginning again!

In Pakistani today, democracy will take a new birth and let’s hope this time will last long. Unfortunately here, it only last of 5-7 years before some dictator takes control of the country of country's sake (and unfortunate fact is that our politicians (opposition parties) welcome that change or take over for that matter).

If this new government can give one thing in return to its people then I would suggest 'a constitution which is high above everything'. Every citizen’s rights are protected and practiced under it. If we only recognize the fact that constitution is highest legal document in this country and it will protected & practiced in every way possible then it will solve many problem of ours. With democracy comes freedom of speech and life and only true democracy is the answer to many problems of Pakistan which includes terrorism, hate, depression and injustice.

AOL acquires Bebo: The race is on...

AOL has made its social networking move, acquiring Bebo and getting access to its membership of 40 million worldwide.

In a statement Thursday, AOL said Bebo is a “perfect complement to AOL’s personal communications network and puts us in a leading position in social media.”
Indeed, Bebo does make AOL a player in social networking (see Techmeme). Meanwhile, if you couple Bebo with AOL’s ad networks and other initiatives like Open AIM 2.0 Time Warner’s online unit has some mojo.

Let’s add up AOL’s assets:
- AOL has spent almost $1 billion on ad acquisitions including ADTECH, buy.at, Lightningcast, Quigo, TACODA and Third Screen Media to create Platform-A.
- AOL has a lot of inventory through AOL.com, Moviefone, TMZ and Engadget, which is surprisingly never mentioned in Time Warner propoganda.
- And now it has Bebo.

The big question is this: Can AOL monetize Bebo as well as its other inventory? AOL talked a lot about “engagement advertising,” but the jury is still out on that one. AOL has struggled of late. And if Google has headaches monetizing social media I’m not sure AOL can figure it out any better.

Now it’s up to AOL to do something with Bebo within the bureaucratic structure of parent Time Warner. Another key thread is that the social networking field has narrowed dramatically. AOL has Bebo. News Corp. has MySpace. And Facebook is in bed with Microsoft.

As for the rest of the field, AOL’s purchase of Bebo is likely to set off a round of consolidation among smaller players that would be fine tuck-in deals in a larger setting.

With Bebo off the table sites like Ning and LinkedIn have just become more valuable–especially to a company like Yahoo, which appears to be left out of the social networking party.

Note: Source taken from ZDNet blog.

Government role in nation building

I had a very detailed discussion with Bilal (office colleague and friend) about government role on promoting or say building industries in country. My argument is that government needs to provide infrastructure and environment that help flourish need ideas into practical. Like you can not produce good students out from school or university unless institute provide him the environment that brings out the creative soul of that student, where s/he can put ideas into reality without any fear, either that fear comes in shape of loss, dogmas, traditions.

If you do not provide a fair playing ground, not every player in the team would be lucky to deliver and perform. You've to engine next generation in a way that it becomes a prolific unit of the country. Every country has its own traditions which differ from others; similarly we can not expect that an engineer, doctor or scientist can deploy/implement strategies which were successful in US or UK. Every country has its own economical, political and regional dependencies that might effect the outcome.

Civil society alone can not do nothing, it's the Goverment which needs to put financial muscles to utilize manpower according to its needs.

The change must come from within, it can not come from outside.

Taking another twist

Pakistani politics is as difficult as Woman's nature. You can not predict for a moment what will going to happen next; yesterday foes are today's friend. Now days, we're watch a continuous struggle from lawyers to restore judiciary and political parties joining hands with them to remove President of the country.

Yes, institutions are important and individuals have no comparison to it.

Firefox3 5x faster than IE7

The almost-but-not-quite-final beta of Firefox 3 (FF3 beta 4) is now available for download. The most noticeable improvement is speed. In some tests, it’s three times faster than Firefox 2 (meaning the test completes in 1/3 the time), and a whopping five times faster than IE 7:

Other improvements in beta 4 include:

- Smarter location bar that tunes itself to your browsing habits. As you type in part of the URL it will offer suggestions based on where you’ve been before.

- Better native look-n-feel on Vista, Mac OSX, and Linux. This includes continuing work on icons, menus, native controls.

- Zoom just the text or the whole page. Zooming the text was one feature I missed from Firefox 2.

- Reduced memory usage. This is the main reason I switched to Firefox 3 for my everyday use. The old version often became unstable after a long session with many tabs open.

To see all the changes made so far in Firefox 3 read this excellent summary by Percy Cabello or see the release notes. Mozilla watchers expect one more beta before the production version is released.

Note: Source taken from ZDNet blog.

Hunting - Is it addiction?

On Friday, I had my very first close experience of hunting birds and my very first observation would be: Now, I know why people become serial killers.

Killing becomes part of their addiction, they always felt the need for more or I should say, it's the thirst which never ends unless it ends him.

The first face expression on every shooter (and killer for that matter) was sense of joy and achievement. Some may argue it's different from killing a human-being and I shouldn't be comparing a human life with an animal or bird, and not all hunters are serial killers.

I think, its only the experience level which makes them different otherwise, if someone has killed two or three people after some intervals then it is certain s/he will kill another whenever he gets the chance. Or in other words, tendency of killing human is more in who has already done it (whether he is police man, solider or some innocent killer).

I've already planned to buy my own 12 bore shotgun (for bird hunting ONLY)... ;)

Confidence level - Girls have it now

Last night, I was on my school friend's mehndi (one of the traditional function in Pakistani marriage). We dance, enjoyed and had lots of halla-gulla there then we decided to leave for McDonald's (RWP) for good reason but told everyone to be back soon.

On McDonald's, one of our friend who is a chain-smoker went out to smoke and when he came back, he was excited and had something interesting to share with us. Here is in his own words of what happened there. He was smoking, a well-dressed and good-looking girl walked to him and told him that she has come along with children and just now she found that she's carrying no money. She would be grateful if he can lend him some money which she'll definitely return (she has brought kids with her, and she can't disappoint them without having food here). Like most of us, he does not carry paper money with him. He told her to come to drive way and he will pay then he gave his cell number to her.

He comes back inside and was sharing this experience with us that he gets a call from her, asking where he is? We decided immediately to go out to the drive way :). Earlier I thought, it would be joke... How a married woman can do that? But interesting she was there with family (without husband) and he paid for her family's meal :). What we discussed in-between is something personal which I can not share here ;) She called back to her saying thanks and telling him that she will give him a buzz at night :D... Just imagine, she'll give him a buzz and rest, I leave that to your imaginations... ;) We then went to Gelato affair in Islamabad, and some had shakes and some hot coffee... Now one can image who would have ordered what?

In past, I had couple of strange personal experiences of confident girls but a married woman - what can I say about it?

(Alas! I don't smoke, but now I'm seriously thinking about changing this BAD HABIT ;)

Is Musharaf indispensable for Pakistan?

In Pakistan, after some time the ruling regime (premier for that matter) come up with an conclusion that s/he has become indispensable for this country and without him, the country can not seal through the difficult period, it is currently in... (interestingly they avoid addressing, if they're responsible to take this country to this place of chaos or they even now become a part of the problem) . Not surprisingly, in last 3 decades, all our premiers were in that illusion.

If we neutrally evaluate 3 of the most prominent political/military figures in Pakistani - Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif and Musharaf. Surprisingly Pakistan became more democratic, liberal, progressive and independent in foreign policy in a military ruler's tenure. We saw IT, telecom, educational reforms were introduced and first time skilled labour were prefering to work in Pakistan, infact huge number of skilled menpower came back to Pakistan.

On the whole, international image of Pakistan was improved under Muharaf regime till 2005. But suddenly like every other premier in Pakistan, he start feeling that he alone is responsible for the positive financial, social activities and without him, everything will come apart. Earlier his speaches were sense of inspiration for many, people always believed what he was saying (even though he never took-off his uniform as promise but it was not the concern of common man). He was on helm of affairs then things took a u-turn on him... came along the 'lal masjid' incident (a right decision but wrong execution) and last nail to his coffin (though I still believe it will not effect Muharaf's regime) was chief justice removal case in 2007 - it's still an on going struggle between anti-Musharaf lobbiest and Pro-Musharaf.

Today, Pakistan see at least 1-2 suicide bombings killing dozens each week. If you ask Pakistanis, what is the quickest solution to this menace, 95% (including Pro-Musharaf) would suggest to remove Musharaf and everything will normalize. Is it so and is it the right choice?

Microsoft puts a note on VMWare and Virtualization

Hyper-V, formerly known as “Viridian”, greatly differs from the virtualization product from Microsoft currently marketed as Microsoft Virtual Server in that it uses a hypervisor to provide hardware abstraction services to the OS environment and do resource allocation and partitioning. This differs from products such as Microsoft Virtual Server, VMWare Server and VMWare Workstation, Parallels, Linux KVM, and the recently Sun-acquired Virtualbox from Innotek use a technique known as host-based virtualization in which a host operating system such as Windows or Linux runs a subprocess provided by its native kernel called a Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) to provide virtualization services such as a virtual CPU, memory and devices to a virtual machine.

A hypervisor, on the other hand, is a thin abstraction layer which boots on the native hardware that performs some of the functions of an OS kernel, but abstracts much of what is needed to run multiple operating systems with their applications on top of it.

The advantages of hypervisor-based virtualization is that it tends to be faster and more enterprise scalable. The disadvantages are that hypervisors tend to be heavily hardware dependent and usually require hardware acceleration, such as Intel’s “VT” or AMD’s “Pacifica” extensions present in the latest Xeon and Opteron chips, such as it is with Hyper-V and Xen-based solutions, and require modified OS kernels and special paravirtualized device drivers to be run in the VM environment to facilitate enhanced I/O and networking performance.

Note: Source taken from ZDNet blog.

Pakistani Politics - Taking a new twist

This is the first time in our recent past that major political parties are sitting together to form a national government and for the first time our opposition is planning (at least claiming in press-conferences) to play a proactive, constructive role. If Q-league (Pro-Musharaf party) keeps its word and take part as helping body then it will certainly help them not only in next election but will also set a new tradition in Pakistan.

I also hope, opposition or any other party for that matter will not undermine ruling party to complete its constitutional term of 5 years.

So far, Zardari role is impressive and I think for longer interest of his party - PPPP, he should keep himself away from running as a front-line contender for PM. Leave this place for senior most party member and play a father-like figure in PPPP, and build/improve is bad image of Mr. 10%.

Pakistan, at this critical juncture need no more surprises of floor-crossings or forward-blocks. Changing loyalties for small political/economical gains have never helped Pakistan, this is time we should denounce and reject anyone who put personal gains over national.

My first post and I lost it...

My first post wasn't saved so I lost it before publishing it... A very encourging and successful note to start my blogging activity :). So I decided to change my blog title from 'Is revolution in our doorstop' to 'My first post and I lost it'...

Anyways, my first post should be more about who I am rather what I am good in doing - lossing things... ;)

Oks, catch everyone tomorrow and I am sure there will be no comment in next 30 days from anyone unless I start telling people personally to post their comments here ;)