Amending the Mistake

A lot has been written in the aftermath of Salman Taseer’s murder, with some suggesting that the country is “near” a social collapse – An explosion of discussions, writings and views as if the liberals (who are in a clear minority from quite some time) have just woken up to reality and are suggesting that this incident and its reaction alone represents the demise of Pakistani Society. The awakening impact of Governor’s murder on the liberals is more shocking than the incident itself, while the conservative right wing is in a continuous state of denial as always, the liberals also seem oblivious to the fact that we are not “near” but in fact already “collapsed”.

The social disintegration or collapse is a relative term in today’s world; it represents transformation rather than extinction of a society. Moreover, the collapse does not happen overnight and is a slow process which ultimately culminates in the complete change of social, moral and economic status.

The rampant anarchy in the state with different political, security and religious factions controlling their stakes; destruction of the civil apparatus; wide spread defiance of the law; and complete economic dependence on foreign aid represents the change which has already taken place.

The murder of Salman Taseer thus is not representative of an impending but an ongoing collapse which was more evident when Musharraf regime started handing over its own citizens to foreign powers and allowed drone strikes within its own borders; it was much more obvious in the muted response of Gojra Incident, the public massacre in Sialkot and the response to attack on Ahmedies in Lahore. The Governor’s murder is just another incident in the sequence.

However, the caution by some liberal sections about a possible takeover by the extremists is not based on actual ground realities. There is no single religious ideology in Pakistan which can support a theocratic takeover. The religious discourse in Pakistan is an out of control experiment of foreign powers and our military which is now pushing the country to chaos as opposed to a structured takeover, every member of the clergy and each of their followers follow a self-defined version of the religion which is more indicative of secularism than theocracy.

Pakistan is more divided today than it was 63 years ago; the country has been struggling with its identity since its inception. The deep ethnic and cultural divisions required a secular state rather than an Islamic Republic – Pakistan will have to fix that mistake if it wants to preserve its current borders. We need a secular and progressive state which can cherish the ethnic and religious diversity of its people.

Role of IT Architect

The Secret Science of Motivation – Daniel Pink

Pink argues that the extrinsic motivators or incentives are the legacy of the industrial age, they only work for procedural work which does not require creative thinking. The Motivation of a 21st century information worker revolves around the following intrinsic motivational factors.

1. AUTONOMY
2. MASTERY
3. PURPOSE

 

Url Shortening: Tr.im shutting down

A few days back I posted a few concerns about the URL shortening and the “tiny url’s” which are now all over the place literraly.

Now another conern comes along, so what happens if the company you are depending on for keeping all your URL’s safe which you would be posting for months or years (in future) suddenly shuts down. You loose the meaning of all your life long tweets which thousands of links. A huge amount of content will be lost with millions of broken links.

That is exactly what is going to happen to the URL’s of Tr.im, the URL shortening service which is shutting down.

Using Log Parser for analyzing IIS Logs

Microsoft Log Parser is a Command Line tool to analyze and extract data from all sorts of Log Files. It is a command line tool and does not have a fancy UI but is extremely power. The most powerful feature is the use of SQL Like query structure to extract information.

Just created the following Availability Throughput report for a couple of application that we have here. It is taking the average of the time-taken field in the IIS log over the last 4 months.

See the Log parser query.

After getting the data it is just a matter of putting it in an excel and generting the graph which I did but the Log Parser tool itself can generate a graph output as an image. There is along list of input and output formats for the tool. I just did’nt had time to look into the graph switches right now.

 

Best Web-Based Email System – GMAIL

I have been using GMAIL from mid 2005 and the moment I started using it I just could not go back to Yahoo! which I was using earlier. Hotmail was not even in the league back in 2005.

Although gmail when it was first introduced was quite different in managing email replies and threads and I know a lot of people who could not just get around the management of the replies. I am not sure it was the AJAX experience which caught me or the loading speed (comapred to Yahoo at the time) but I loved the experience and got stuck to it.

GMAIL is continuously evolving and adding features which are continuously enriching the experience for the users. For example colured Labels, the in-line gTalk chat and the recently added themes are some of the few continuous improvements that have been really useful.

If you are a member of a few mailing lists with a lot of traffic, you probably know how annoying it becomes to skim through all the useless junk and focus on the urgent message which you have got from your family. The coloured labels help me do just that, focus on the messages which are important and read the rest whenever you don’t have anything better to do.

A look into my gmail experience.

Is the party over for Microsoft?

A perfect Analysis of Microsoft strategy in recent years. They just can’t stick to what they do best and want to compete every other successful company in the industry.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/is-the-party-over-for-microsoft-2009-07-24

My View of our new Workplace

Woods Bagot is designing the new workplace for ADTA’s new building and they did a session with us about how the new workplace should look like. Following is my view of what should be in the new workplace.

 

Karachi before the year 1900

I received these in email, apparently they are from British Library and I think they are worth sharing.

 

Napier Mole Bridge (road to Keamari). Manora lighthouse visible in the distance

Sind Arts College (now DJ Science College) – built 1877

Karachi city street view

Lyari Market

Karachi Gymkhana (built 1886)

Empress Market (built 1889)

Victoria Road (note St. Andrew’s church). Area to the left is today’s Regal chowk; intersection in the foreground is where Mahboob Market now stands.

View of Saddar (Empress Market is in the distance; street in the foreground is probably Victoria Rd or Elphi.)

Clifton Road (now Fatima Jinnah Road ). Street in the foreground is today’s Shahrah-e-Faisal as it bears around Metropole. Part of Sind Club seen on the right.

View of Saddar (St. Patrick’s cathedral/St. Joseph’s convent in the distance). Intersection in foreground is crossing of Zaibunnisa and Shahrah-e-Iraq (road going from passport office towards St. Joseph ’s)

Frere Street (Saddar) with Empress Market visible

Is Url Shortening Safe ?

Yeatarday I saw a report on CNN about how social networking sites like facebook and specially twitter are serving as havens for cyber criminals. A large number of users post all sort of private information on these websites and people take advantage of this information. Also, people are mislead by posting wrong information about certain high-demand topics.

In my opinion the most destructive aspect specifically with respect to the twitter is the URL Shortening ot Tiny URL’s. From the last many years people have become increasingly cautious about visiting malicious websites and it is a general best practice now not to click/download links that you don’t trust.

The Tiny URL phenomenon takes this all away, where you are following hunderds of people, celebrities wicthout actually knowing who is behind the username and then there are literally millions of tiny url’s which people post daily and you access the link without trusting its authenticity. You never know where it will redirect you.

Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror also has a different take on Tiny URL’s.