Double U Blog

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

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.

(more…)

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.

Windows 7′s low system-resource usage is the right direction for Microsoft to take, and its an essential feature if Microsoft wants to be on the netbook market. In addition, their recent decision to release a small-footprint security suite (antimalware, firewall, etc.) is another plus point under their belt. Read on for a brief look at why I think the things Microsoft is doing with Windows 7 are the right direction for the new OS and the company’s position in the consumer market

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.

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.

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).

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.

Almost half the world — about 3 billion people — lives on less than $2.50 a day. To get things into perspective, that’s approximately Rs. 200 (Pakistani), roughly the same cost as chicken.

So we finally decided the Shawwal moon had been sighted after all, and tomorrow–okay, technically today, because I’m posting this after midnight–is Eid-ul-Fitr!

I don’t have a shiny graphic to post up here in celebration, but Eid Mubarak nonetheless everyone, and have a great day!