Double U Blog

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Life in Unlikely Places

May 3rd, 2009 · Articles

Where would you put a living colony of microorganisms if you wanted to kill it? Probably in a place where there’s no light and no oxygen; throw in some harsh temperatures for good measure and chances are that when you look again in a few million years, there will be absolutely no sign of life.

But nature doesn’t work that way, and life isn’t so easy to eliminate – especially when it comes to microbial organisms, which have proven time and time again that they are very good at adapting to harsh conditions. [...] A team of scientists from the National Science Foundation headed by Dr Jill Mikucki has found another such species, except that is has adapted to thriving with no access to oxygen, sunlight or any outside nutrients.

Life, where nothing lives — by Waleed Zuberi, DAWN SciTech

When I first came across how an ancient microbial system survives without the need for anything we consider essential to biological life, the first thought that came to mind was how this shifts our perspective regarding life on other planets. If life can originate in what we consider the “ideal conditions” on Earth and then adapt to living in a completely different setting, isn’t it possible that this has happened elsewhere in the galaxy – or even the Universe? Read the article for more, and let me know what you think!

Note: I am aware of the part about boiling water being acidic. It is an editing error and should be corrected shortly!

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Just a thought

March 3rd, 2009 · Thought

To say the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team this morning was a revolting and heinous crime, and to hope for the severest punishment for whoever is responsible for it would be stating the obvious. The attack is a crime not just against a sport, two different countries, the people who were injured and the policemen who lost their lives during the incident, it’s also a crime against humanity as a whole. I don’t think anybody would disagree with that.

But this is not just a matter of “condemning” a terrorist attack and then moving on with jolly life. Sadly, it’s so much more. Today’s events are significant not just because an international sports team was targeted like this. Today’s events are important also because of where they happened, when they happened and why they happened. This happened in Pakistan, a country being eaten away from the inside by many factors, too numerous to list in this post. This happened in a time when this country is in an especially weakened state, both internally and in the international arena. As to why it happened…well, I think I’ll leave the speculation as to whodunnit (and why) to the ‘analysts’ and ‘pundits’ on TV.

The political, economic and social turmoil Pakistan is going through is no secret. While everyone may have a different opinion on who caused it and why it’s persisting, the problem at hand is much bigger than the mudslinging we’ve seen on TV all day. While Pakistan has been continually humiliated time and again in they eyes of the international community (for reasons that may or may not be valid, that’s not the point), our politicians choose to continue indulging in their favorite past-time: the tug of war. The power struggle, musical chairs, politicking or mudslinging, call it whatever you like. The fact remains that it does nothing to improve the situation. In fact, this worsens it exponentially.

The terrorist attack was unsuccessful, thankfully, in what it’s ultimate objective was. But I fear it was very successful in achieving its secondary goals. And what were those, you ask? Why, switch on the idiot box, friend, and all shall be revealed to you. Switch to one of the news channels — any one of the gazillion we have. Our already feeble government is falling apart (or so it seems), institutions are engaged in a continued power struggle and the mudslinging that comes with it, and media men (and women) add fuel to the fire under the guise of ‘journalism.’ Society falling apart, lawlessness, economic disaster, religious degradation — you name the social malady, we’ve got it. In abundance.

But perhaps most importantly, this nation has no sense of unity, and this is a time when we need it the most. The much quoted and perhaps cliched example of a fist comes to mind. You can break a finger when its stretched out alone; but when all five fingers are clenched together, you can’t break the fist as easily. Under fire from all sides, unity is what Pakistan needs the most, and it is sadly, what we are lacking the most at this critical juncture. In spite of all our failures as a country, as a nation, as a people, I truly believe unity can pull us through — if not through all of it, at least to a point where we can begin to crawl our way back to a position suitable for a nation of our importance.

What I hope to achieve with this post, I don’t know. This is a change from the usual type of stuff I put on here, but I just felt I had to voice an opinion. What started out as the condemning of a terrorist act has transformed into a rant on what Pakistan needs to survive. But perhaps those things aren’t as divergent as one might think. Is it not after all, humanity and the sense of repulsion from this violence that sets us apart from the terrorists? Shouldn’t that also unite us against our common enemy?

All I can say beyond what I already have is that God will help us, and that it is only just before the dawn that the night is the darkest.

For now, I’ll sign off with a quote I just read on the BBC website that saddens me beyond belief.

“I won’t be coming back here while I’m still living, there is no chance. I don’t think international cricket should return to this country”
– Dominic Cork; commentator and former England cricketer who was caught in the attack this morning.

Feel free…in fact, feel very welcome to comment with any thoughts.

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Recycling Old Cellphones

January 31st, 2009 · Thought

Recycling is almost fiction to most Pakistanis, and the wave of eco-awareness has only swept across a startlingly small percentage of our population. You’ll see several street corners here with a pile of trash that’s been set alight to dispose of; it’s a major health hazard, and it would be stating the obvious to point out how damaging it is to the environment.

Household electronics are one of the top few things that worry environmentalists because of the chemicals and toxins in them. But regular recycling that involves proper disposal won’t have much work to do in Pakistan because not many people throw away their old cellphones – why throw away what you can sell? Makes perfect sense. But then there are still some things that can’t be sold either because they have no market value or you’ve never gotten around to it. Why not donate them to charity, instead?

Mobilink, one of Pakistan’s biggest cell-phone networks, is willing to take them off your hands. They launched a handset recycling project as part of their CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) initiative in early January this year that involves refurbishing old cell phones and accessories, and donating them to charity. The things beyond repair or reuse will be passed on to Wastebusters for proper disposal, which makes the programme even better.

Electronics are dangerous to the environment if disposed of improperly, and they should be used to the last possible moment. I’m all for upgrades and technological advancement, especially when it comes to cell phones — I certainly wouldn’t use an old cell phone unless I had absolutely no other choice. But some people don’t have a cell phone at all, and an old cell phone is better than no cell phone. If you’ve got some old phones and accessories lying around that you don’t use anymore, drop them off in the recycling bins at the designated customer support centers. As Mobilink puts it, “what is useless to you could bring connectivity to someone’s life.”

On a side note, another thing that I’ve seen is people ripping apart electronics like CRT TVs, VCRs, computers and even refrigerators. This happens in a few shops in the area behind the Quaid’s Mausoleum in Saddar. From the fleeting sights I’ve seen of what goes on, they apparently rip the circuit board out and sell the innards, though I’m not at all certain of what they do exactly. Asking them one of these days is on my list of things to do!

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Oliver’s Busy Day

January 10th, 2009 · Blah

Oliver's busy day - webcomic from Wondermark.com

I can certainly relate to Oliver! From the awesome Wondermark by David Malki (click on the image for a larger version).

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15 Tech Predictions for 2009

January 1st, 2009 · Thought

At the year’s end, the interwebs are full of all and sundry trying to predict what the next year will bring. So I joined the bandwagon and gazed into my own little crystal ball to see what the entire hubbub will be about. This is of course concerned with the tech world (with focus on Pakistan) and like any sensible speculator, I’m compelled to say that the future is unpredictable (seeing as it hasn’t happened yet); for that reason and more, most if not all attempts at trying to predict what will take place in the volatile age we live in may fall flat on their faces. I think, with a reasonable amount of sureness (and an equal amount of uncertainty) that things will happen in 2009, and here’s a jab at trying to foresee what some of those things will be.

Predictions number 1 through 6 are focused on the Pakistani tech world — if you have no interest in that you can skip to number 7.

1. Power outages will continue to hamper everyday life and commerce. This isn’t much of a prediction, yes; more like a grim acknowledgment of the harsh reality of living in a country that can’t produce enough electricity. Frequent load shedding and power failures will put Pakistanis at a severe disadvantage in the increasingly competitive world, and things won’t get better as summer comes around and people switch on their air conditioning.

[Read more →]

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Russian businessman trademarks emoticon

December 12th, 2008 · The Web

A series of punctuation marks used to convey a wink in text messages – known as an emoticon – has been trademarked in Russia, says a local businessman.

BBC News

A businessman from Russia has apparently succeeded in trademarking the winking smiley (or emoticon), ;-) . Oleg Teterin says he won’t go after individual users for infringing on his trademark (so I won’t get sued for writing this post), but plans on extorting a yearly license fee from businesses and organizations using the smiley.

This is nothing more than a publicity stunt – no trademark office in the world would entertain such a stupid claim, at least I’d like to think so! The emoticon has been in public use for years! The first smiley was (apparently) introduced back in 1984. Even if he does pursue this claim with actual legal action against a business, any judge in their right mind would (or rather, should!) throw it out in the blink of an eye. I shouldn’t even be paying attention to this Teterin guy because he’s getting exactly what he wants — publicity! Ignore him.

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The Right Direction for Windows 7

November 20th, 2008 · Thought

Microsoft unveiled Windows 7 at PDC (Professional Developer’s Conference) 2008 and it’s been good news ever since. Impressions of the new OS have been pretty positive from all around (except for a couple of exceptions, of course) and from what I’ve seen so far (which isn’t that much, honestly as I haven’t been able to use it myself) everyone is right in saying “Windows 7 is Vista done right.”

Say whatever you like about Vista, it’s evident that Microsoft has learned from the fiasco. With the Apple ads distorting everyone’s perceptions of Microsoft, the increasing popularity of low-power netbooks that can’t handle resource-heavy operating systems, it’s been a deathblow to Vista.

The Apple matter is a whole other issue, but the thing about netbooks must be very worrying to the bigwigs at Microsoft. Hardware manufacturers have been hinting for some time they want an OS that can run on low system resources — it goes without saying that this is what consumers have wanted since day one, but the fact remains that almost the whole of the netbook market is using either Windows XP still or has switched to Linux. Maybe this is the final turning point for Linux to enter the mainstream, but then what about Windows, which counts for about 90% of all computers around the World.

Steve Sinofsky (senior VP at Microsoft) showed off an ASUS Eee PC running Windows 7 (1GHz processor, 1GB RAM) at PDC 2008; there have been reports of people running it on just 512MB RAM too, but take that with a grain of salt. Seven uses much less hard disk space too, which is another scarce resource on netbooks. Microsoft has reportedly gone over and optimized the whole OS with this aim in mind, which is a great thing — it makes Windows an option for netbooks again. Some analyts are predicting an explosion in the netbook market, so this makes Seven’s low resource usage a very big plus point for Windows.

Today, Microsoft also announced its plans for their security software suite, which is currently called OneCare — they’ll start offering it for free, and they’re specifically marketing the new version (due in Summer 2009) as a small-footprint program aimed at computers low on hardware muscle (read: netbooks). One major complaints users have about security software is that they use too much system memory; if Microsoft can pull this one off even relatively successfully, not only will this make Windows computers a lot more secure (yaay!), it’ll be another positive point under their belt.

I like the way things are playing out so far, and I think this is the right thing for Microsoft to do. They’re building up the right sort of hype for Windows 7 (we just hope we’re not burned by this again), and they’re taking the right steps as a business. I’m in no position to judge business decisions of this magnitude (in fact I’m not worthy of passing such opinion), but as a user, I think this is what Windows needs to reinvigorate itself in the tech world. Windows already has a huge market share — all they need is to get over the Vista slump, and the steps they’re taking with Seven might do just that.

Paul Thurrott has a great roundup of all his Windows 7 coverage on his site; he also does a Windows Weekly podcast with Leo Laporte (TWiT) which you should check out if you’re interested — episode 81 is the one recorded right after PDC.

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Outsourcing code and Pakistan’s electricity crises

October 27th, 2008 · Thought

Update: After the blog post announcing this ‘warning’ was inundated with angry and frustrated Pakistani coders, RAC has decided to suspend the site-wide message until they’ve gotten more reliable information on the problem and ground realities.

All,

This is from Ian Ippolito, the owner of Rent a coder.  My sincere apologies if your business was negatively affected in any way.  The message had been removed.

A number of Pakistani coders had claimed that the electrical situation had recently gotten out of hand and asked to be excused from their projects without a poor rating.  We researched the situation on the internet and it appeared true and did so and then posted the warning on the site.  After posting the warning, we then received a number of emails saying that the electrical situation is no different than it used to be for many years, and that competent coders have already made other arrangements and are not affected.

Since there is a big conflict between what different people in Pakistan are telling us, we have removed all messages until we are able to sort out exactly what is happening.

Again my apologies.

Ian Ippolito
http://www.rentacoder.com

———–

Original post

Pakistan’s electricity crises (which has pretty much existed since forever) has just caught the attention of RentACoder.com (RAC), who have posted on their blog warning customers about the issue and advising them to discuss it beforehand with whomever they hire out of Pakistan. The post was categorized under Severe Weather / Other Critical Situations updates.

RAC is a website that allows you to hire freelance ‘coders’ (programmers, designers, writers etc.) instead of having to do it yourself — outsourcing, is what it is. There are many sites for this, whether your purpose is to buy or sell services, RAC and Elance being two of the most popular few. Pakistanis are quite active in such marketplaces and are generally quite good at it (except a few unfortunate cases which give the rest a bad name). The ByteSense blog has a run-down of numbers (written in June) showing the market for and customer rating given to Pakistani coders from various freelance business sites (including the two mentioned in this post).

Granted, the electricity problem is bad – but it’s not so bad as to hinder all business. As Green&White puts it, we still have power for at least 14 hours in the day; and not all parts of Pakistan have to face this problem in the same degree. It is also a safe bet to assume that anyone who is serious about working at places such as RAC and the like has already made arrangements to alternate power sources for their computer and internet — a UPS, generators and laptops are some common ways to work around the issue, and undoubtedly are used by a majority of Pakistani coders.

I can certainly understand why RentACoder would want to caution their customers about this obviously existing problem. It would undoubtedly hurt their credibility–not to mention that of the coder’s–in the eyes of their customers.

The thing that is disheartening is that this message from RAC will surely be taken by some people as implying “steer clear of Pakistanis.” And why not? If I were a customer looking for someone to work on my project and I had two people to choose from, one from Pakistan and the other from whichever other country, RAC’s warning would remain at the back of my mind — I would want the smoothest possible transaction; why risk loosing time and potentially even money? With this mindframe, I think, many people will choose people from other parts of the World over Pakistanis at places such as RAC.

I guess the general complaint with their warning is that it is too harsh, and places yet another hurdle in the path of a Pakistani coder looking to earn pay and experience online.

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LittleBigPlanet delayed over soundtrack

October 19th, 2008 · Blah

LittleBigPlanet (the game) is expected to ‘revive’ sales for the Sony PS3, but it looks like it’ll be 6 days late in doing so. Why? Part of the soundtrack music contained verses from the Quran. Listen to it yourself – see if you can make it out (transcription below).

A player wrote on the Playstation discussions forum about this (along with the recording) and asked Sony to have the parts removed. A moderator promised to look into the matter and locked the thread, which has apparently been deleted since; you can read a cached version of the original thread. The user wrote:

I have noticed something strange in the lyrics of the music track of the level. When I listened carefully, I was surprised to hear some very familiar Arabic words from the Quran.

(…) The words are:

1- In the 18th second: “كل نفس ذائقة الموت” (“kollo nafsin tha’iqatol mawt”, literally: ‘Every soul shall have the taste of death’).

2- Almost immediately after, in the 27th second: “كل من عليها فان” (“kollo man alaiha fan”, literally: ‘All that is on earth will perish’).

Many of the players won’t understand what’s being said — even if they do understand Arabic, many might not have even noticed! However, its good that Sony responded quickly to this instead of just shrugging it off.

I don’t blame Sony at all, and I don’t think anybody should – it’s a bit farfetched to expect them to watch out for this sort of thing, I think. The song itself was released in 2006 and included as part of the soundtrack of the game.

You can read more at Ars Technica.

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Woman killed over Facebook post

October 18th, 2008 · Blah

Just saw this BBC News story.

Man killed wife in Facebook row

A man has been jailed for life for stabbing his wife to death over a posting she made on the social networking site Facebook.

Full story, BBC News

The guy was obviously out of his mind, but I guess her changed relationship status on Facebook to “single” (a few days after he had moved out) tipped him over. Who knows what was going on behind the scenes, but he had ‘left’ her, so I guess her choice was justifiable.

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