Whats up with Hatim!

Since my all time favorite tv show  finished off in its 10th season I had been waiting for its Direct-to-DVD movies. Here in Pakistan we get all movies by hook or by crook since there is not much copyright protection or for that matter proper distribution of films going on any way. I had decided that once these movies come out I will surely buy them (to support guys like Robert C Cooper who spend so much time and money to bring this entertainment to us) but alas I have not been able to give back to the SG makers. However thanks to Bit torrent I was able to download Stargate : Ark of truth and later to my surprise buy a pirated copy of Stargate : Continuum from a local DVD shop.
I found both films to be amazing, although I liked the story of Ark of truth a bit more than Continuum. I really thought that Jack would have more part to play in Continuum, but it was not enough. Overall I think there is a good chance that if more SG movies are made, they would be hailed and the mythology will catch momentum like Star Trek.

There was a suicide attack outside the Danish embassy on 2 June. The Embassy is located in a posh residential area of F-6/2. The attack claimed 8 lives and 24 injured almost all of them Pakistanis and most of them belonging to the office adjacent to the Embassy. The attack has triggered few other embassies to close down operations temporarily including embassy of Sweden of whose closure affects me personally. There are few problems which I think need to be addressed.

In entire Islamabad there is a severe shortage of housing and office space. On top of that all the good spots are taken up by foreign missions etc. They should be moved into an isolated locale so that they don't affect day to day operations of Pakistani citizen.

The Danish could have made an exception in exercising freedom of speech. They could have just stopped printing of those cartoons the second time. The only messege those cartoons were giving was that freedom of speech is more important than caring about the feelings of millions of muslims. If they had stopped reprinting of those cartoons perhaps it would not have come to blasts in Pakistan. I think there are sensible people in EU and US who would agree with me, freedom of speech does not necessarily mean saying what ever you want, some times making sure that hurtful and hateful message never get across.

Today started as normal Monday for me, I got up early to get in my Dad's car only to sleep my way through the journey from Abbottabad to Islamabad (our weekly Monday ritual). We reached in time , I had my usual breakfast and hitched a ride with my Dad's chuffer to my office as I had left my car parked there. I was on my usual route in rush hour traffic and then some thing happened which has shocked me to my core. A young boy in his teens wearing school unform was on a bus full of otehr kids hanging from the bus. The fully loaded public transport hastily sped and over took a truck. In this process the boy lost his grip and fell down on the road only to be crushed by the oncoming truck.

I just can't describe how horrific it was. I have never seen a person die before, atleast like this.Since that time the scene of that young boy in school uniform getting crushed by a truck has been playing in my mind over and over. There was nothing any one could do. No one knew what that young student could have become had he continued his education. We probably loose so many young people this way. This was just a pointless death, So many people could have done some thing to avoid such a loss. I just can't help but think, what did that young chap deserve to get this painful death. He was son to some one, probably brother to some others. He could have become a sole bread earner for his family, with his death so many hopes and dreams have died. It is true that you can tell the charecter of a nation by looking at it's traffic. Our charecter can then only be described as thugs, rapists and of murderes. It was the guy's fault too that he should have considered his own safety. But I would blame it all on the traffic police.

Why can't Islamabad traffic police stop buses which are over crowded, ban any driver or company who violates these basics of safety. I am not talking about seat belts or air bags, I am talking about people not hanging from the roof of buses and every one having a decent seat to sit on. I am just not going to sit idle on this and will make sure that I make this case heard on every public forum.

I found a link to screen shots of Red Alert 3, it looks stunning. Red Alert was my favourite game  back in the day when I was a hard core gamer. I have been in retirement since last 2 years , but this title may lure me out of retirement :). Now I also have a Vista box with me which could run this game, but I would like to play this title on PS3 instead.

You know when you keep on delaying things, it has a tendency to bite back. I was posting drafts of my blog entries for the entire month of December in my laptop. But then I do the ultimate blunder of plainly deleting the folder. Even at this point lesson was not learnt. I was suppose to recover my laptop back to its factory state (ie Windows) and I forgot to backup my private PGP keys. This is the second time within one year that I have lost my PGP keys this way. I never backed them up on my server. I guess the best way to ensure that keys are never lost is to print the private key.

But life still goes on. All I have are few unused public keys on to global PGP servers, but atleast the key which matters is posted on my own site. I really need to look into some good backup solutions (other than online)

You would think that with election results not going in favor of the establishment of Pakistan, the least it could do is sit tight and do nothing. Today I recieved the following email from my ISP

 

Dear Valued Customer:

Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (www.pta.gov.pk)
has directed all ISPs of the country to block access
to www.youtube.com web site for containing
blasphemous web content/movies.

The site would remain blocked till further orders from
PTA. Meanwhile, Internet users can write to
youtube.com to remove the objectionable web
content/movies because this removal would enable
the authorities to order un-blocking of this web
site.

We're sorry for any inconvenience.

Best Regards

Manager
Technical Assistance Center
Nayatel Pvt. Ltd.
Islamabad.

 

I am not sure which objectionable web content is the Govt after now. Previously  Google's blogspot was banned in Pakistan for some time. Some genius decided to block the whole domain of blogspot.com instead of certain blogs. I serioulsy hope that the new Govt would take some steps to ensure freedom for the people of Pakistan on the internet.

 

 

It was elections day in Abbottabad on 18th Feb 2008 and I had the chance to vote for first time in my life. Elections always have negativity surrounded around them, people think that it has already been decided that who shall win and who will loose. Most people believe that it's no use to go out and vote as even if thier opnions were taken into account, they would no doubt choose some one who eventually turns up to be a corrupt person and does nothing for the nation, A few days back I was having a discussion amongst my colleuges that we are not a nation and we still need nation building. Even though there was a 40% turnout in the present polls I still believe that we are not a nation, yet. With democretic forces hopefully coming into power in Islamabad, there is a chance that there will be some nation building. As for me I am happy that I exercised my opnion, but I am skeptical as to how the new government will handle the current situation of Pakistan.

I was disappointed to see that no Mac Book Pro updates were announced in MacWorld 2008. But I knew that sooner or later Apple would be announcing Mac Book pro update with upcoming Penryn processors. I saw some glimmer of hope from an article posted on AppleInsider.

Looking at the comments for this article, it seems that new update would be worth the wait. I was actually planning to get a MacBook today, but now I will wait for the update :). I dream of a BlueRay MacBook

I never adorerd Benazir, neither did I ever like her political party. But her assasination has made me quite upset today. I am sure there are many people in the world who are upset by it and probably a few of them were her rivals as well. It is just not right for a person to be killed like that. First off she was a mother of three, then she was a leader of a party which represents a smaller province. Her father was also hanged in the same city not far from where her assasination took place. But It makes me think why am I not upset even to half of what I am now when I hear about all those people dying in bomb blasts. I think the reasons are simple, I knew Benazir more than just an anonymous person. I had seen her pictures and knew about her history (where she got educated etc). I knew about her (dysfunctional?) family. Then I saw a video of how she died. It is still unknown how she died exactly, but the very fact that she is waving and smiling to a cheering crowd of supporters and the next moment is utter chaos body parts flying every where.No one deserves to die like this, but the truth is people die like this on daily basis. I wonder when would this killing stop and we as a species would decide to be more like fedration in StarTrek.

I have been maintaining a blog for about 3 years now in one form or the other, but I have yet to achieve maturity in my blogging. Come to think of it if I were to become a well known blogger on subjects which I cherish to talk about, I would not hesitate a minute and hide all the previous garbage that I have been maintaining for past 3 years. Hopefully I will gain maturity over time and put quality content on my blog.