Policies in Pakistan are invariably a joke!
Just on Tuesday, angry mob ransacked the MEPCO office. Dozens of cars were burnt, property losses are still being recorded. Protests went into the second day with around 40 men arrested under the anti-terrorist law. We saw officials retaliating strongly against the protesters. All of this havoc due to a commodity called “electricity”, which is rare in Pakistan.
The irony of the situation is, in the same city, probably across a few blocks, two teams were playing an international cricket match, under lights. And to add insult to injury of those protesters, there was no power outage like the one in Lahore.
Ok, I concede that the stadium may be running those lights on generators, which is quite the standard these days. But the laymen don’t understand that do they? For them the math is simple, light runs on electricity, and that comes from WAPDA.
Wouldn’t it be nice on part of PCB to arrange day-only matches for a low-profile series such as this? I wonder!
Friday, April 18, 2008
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Protests Final
This is the final part of a three part series, please find the earlier parts here and here.
In order to handle such situations, what we’re lacking is an understanding of how the Prophet of Allah (S.a.w.) and his companions handled them. Obviously, during the 13 years of early preaching in Makkah, and in the 10 years in Medina while inviting world leaders to Islam, there have been several incidents when someone grew so much in his audacity that he did something blasphemous to the Prophet of Allah (S.a.w.). We know that Abu-Lahb and his wife were known blasphemers, so was Abu Jahl during the stay in Mecca. While Caesar of Rome, Hercules of Syria, and the Iranian emperor all responded in aggressive negation, some even tearing the letter that contained Quranic verses. As far as I have found out, there’s been very few incidents when a Companion’s sword did the justice. But to that end, my knowledge is limited and requires your input. If we can just find out from the life of the Prophet (s.a.w.) and his companions how they responded in those events, we may end up having a destination as a nation after all.
[Knowledge gain August 2009: The book Ar Rahiq ul Makhtoom gives references of murders of a jew called Kaab bin Ashraf and another blasphemer who were both murdered by Sahabah (ra) and that too after deceiving them! So we have a precedent after all]
What we definitely need is having a strong media base. We need to create more opinion makers - like one of my friends has previously said in a circulating email chain, there aren’t much good Muslim writers on Wikipedia -to divert the masses in our favor, we need to show them the other side of the picture, in a more humane way. And this can only be done when the Muslim Media are strong enough and more importantly, united enough to send out a singular message to the world. I know that the points raised in this write up are not new, but I’ve written them in the hope that they may be able to tap a newer audience and just may reignite our dormant fire of Iman.
All we need to do is to make a start, and with a pure heart. We just need to find our individual strengths – some of us are good orators, some are good writers, some are good presenters, the mathematicians, the scientists, the number crunchers, the architects, the pilots, the marines, the astronauts, the multi-linguals, the multi-culturals, each has a strength, a niche’ that sets him or her apart - and then find out how to put it to the best use for Islam. Taking time out is easy. Just start by giving 5% of your time to the brainstorming session. If we’re thinking about it the same way we think about that next picnic spot, the new restaurant, that next car, that elusive better job, or just about anything that we’re obsessed about, we can hope that Allah would lead us to the correct path.
And just signing off, there’s a verse in the Quran (I can’t remember the reference) whose message is: If the love of your parents, your sons and daughters, your spouse, your business, your wealth, your houses or just about anything is more than your love for ALLAH, then just wait in a far corner for ALLAH’s verdict, and Allah doesn’t like such Kafirs. [Knowledge gain August 2009: At Taubah:24] Let’s analyze ourselves again and again, and try to explore ourselves how we can make the change. Singly, I’m very weak, but with you, and the omnipresent help of Allah, we could be the most formidable force in the world.
This is the final part of a three part series, please find the earlier parts here and here.
In order to handle such situations, what we’re lacking is an understanding of how the Prophet of Allah (S.a.w.) and his companions handled them. Obviously, during the 13 years of early preaching in Makkah, and in the 10 years in Medina while inviting world leaders to Islam, there have been several incidents when someone grew so much in his audacity that he did something blasphemous to the Prophet of Allah (S.a.w.). We know that Abu-Lahb and his wife were known blasphemers, so was Abu Jahl during the stay in Mecca. While Caesar of Rome, Hercules of Syria, and the Iranian emperor all responded in aggressive negation, some even tearing the letter that contained Quranic verses. As far as I have found out, there’s been very few incidents when a Companion’s sword did the justice. But to that end, my knowledge is limited and requires your input. If we can just find out from the life of the Prophet (s.a.w.) and his companions how they responded in those events, we may end up having a destination as a nation after all.
[Knowledge gain August 2009: The book Ar Rahiq ul Makhtoom gives references of murders of a jew called Kaab bin Ashraf and another blasphemer who were both murdered by Sahabah (ra) and that too after deceiving them! So we have a precedent after all]
What we definitely need is having a strong media base. We need to create more opinion makers - like one of my friends has previously said in a circulating email chain, there aren’t much good Muslim writers on Wikipedia -to divert the masses in our favor, we need to show them the other side of the picture, in a more humane way. And this can only be done when the Muslim Media are strong enough and more importantly, united enough to send out a singular message to the world. I know that the points raised in this write up are not new, but I’ve written them in the hope that they may be able to tap a newer audience and just may reignite our dormant fire of Iman.
All we need to do is to make a start, and with a pure heart. We just need to find our individual strengths – some of us are good orators, some are good writers, some are good presenters, the mathematicians, the scientists, the number crunchers, the architects, the pilots, the marines, the astronauts, the multi-linguals, the multi-culturals, each has a strength, a niche’ that sets him or her apart - and then find out how to put it to the best use for Islam. Taking time out is easy. Just start by giving 5% of your time to the brainstorming session. If we’re thinking about it the same way we think about that next picnic spot, the new restaurant, that next car, that elusive better job, or just about anything that we’re obsessed about, we can hope that Allah would lead us to the correct path.
And just signing off, there’s a verse in the Quran (I can’t remember the reference) whose message is: If the love of your parents, your sons and daughters, your spouse, your business, your wealth, your houses or just about anything is more than your love for ALLAH, then just wait in a far corner for ALLAH’s verdict, and Allah doesn’t like such Kafirs. [Knowledge gain August 2009: At Taubah:24] Let’s analyze ourselves again and again, and try to explore ourselves how we can make the change. Singly, I’m very weak, but with you, and the omnipresent help of Allah, we could be the most formidable force in the world.
This is the final part of a three part series, please find the earlier parts here and here.
Protests II
This is the second part of a three part series, please find the first part here and the last part here.
If we look back at the last five years, there have been a number of such incidents where Muslims have been provoked by a seemingly harmless entity. Take for example, Nike’s new range of shoes in which the word “Air” was written to resemble “Allah” in Arabic; Burger king’s ice cream packaging where the cone was made to resemble “Allah” in Arabic; Wikipedia printing paintings depicting the Prophet (S.a.w.); Salman Rushdie being awarded British knighthood despite Muslim outrage. Muslims fail to understand the coincidence and the good intent behind these incidents. Apparently, the western corporate giants are trying to lure the huge Muslim population by putting the symbols known to them on their brands. It’s only that Muslims don’t see the friendly side of it at all. For them, fiddling with anything sacred to them is just blasphemy. Herein lies the problem of the west. If the west can bow to their Japanese guests saying “sayonara”, eat Chinese food with chop sticks, wear Hawaiian shirts on beaches - in short, respect and follow the traditions of other nations the way it’s recommended - then may be they can just know how to communicate with Muslims. But the question is who’ll show them the turn-ons and turn-offs of the Muslims. May be it’s the job of the Muslim administrations around the world.
Muslim governments on the other hand, are dealing with domestic violence and tension on borders. As these lines are being written, Turkey is at war against the Kurds, Iraq against the combating locals, Pakistan against the local Talibans, Afghanistan against the actual Talibans, The Fateh regime of Palestine against Hamas, Sudan dealing with the Darfur crisis, while other Muslim countries are also engaged in constant mind games from the rest of the world. With such problems at hand, Muslim rulers are not only already exhausted, the majority of them is not considered to be practicing Muslim by other Muslims. That, eventually – and quite rightly – becomes the job of the general Muslim population.
The plight of a common Muslim today is that he or she loves Islam but is not ready to follow it. People who don’t even offer Friday prayers still love Islam, but only as someone would love his birthplace. This is the same reason why we get to receive long email chains proclaiming Will Smith or Michael Jackson’s acceptance of Islam, there’s an inner desire in each and every one of the 1 billion strong Muslims to serve Islam, to preach its teachings, to show the world the correct side of Islam. However, we’re not inclined to first follow the same principles in our lives. We see someone with a beard and say “Masha ALLAH” and then step into the barber’s shop to fashion that goatee on our chin; we hear the Azaan and sit upright, and when it finishes, go back to the same reclining position. But the desire to do good doesn’t die, it may be dormant, but it’s there without argument. So when such an incident occurs, we feel extremely agitated, and with no knowledge of how to handle things, eventually end up following charlatans who convince them that killing any “Kafir” is the only way to salvation. Hence you see the suicide bombings, the beheadings of journalists and other instruments of terrorism. And unless we, the common Muslim, is educated enough, there’s no way we can convince the non-believers that for all the man-made problems created in this world today, Islam has the solutions for all of them.
This is the second part of a three part series, please find the first part here and the last part here.
If we look back at the last five years, there have been a number of such incidents where Muslims have been provoked by a seemingly harmless entity. Take for example, Nike’s new range of shoes in which the word “Air” was written to resemble “Allah” in Arabic; Burger king’s ice cream packaging where the cone was made to resemble “Allah” in Arabic; Wikipedia printing paintings depicting the Prophet (S.a.w.); Salman Rushdie being awarded British knighthood despite Muslim outrage. Muslims fail to understand the coincidence and the good intent behind these incidents. Apparently, the western corporate giants are trying to lure the huge Muslim population by putting the symbols known to them on their brands. It’s only that Muslims don’t see the friendly side of it at all. For them, fiddling with anything sacred to them is just blasphemy. Herein lies the problem of the west. If the west can bow to their Japanese guests saying “sayonara”, eat Chinese food with chop sticks, wear Hawaiian shirts on beaches - in short, respect and follow the traditions of other nations the way it’s recommended - then may be they can just know how to communicate with Muslims. But the question is who’ll show them the turn-ons and turn-offs of the Muslims. May be it’s the job of the Muslim administrations around the world.
Muslim governments on the other hand, are dealing with domestic violence and tension on borders. As these lines are being written, Turkey is at war against the Kurds, Iraq against the combating locals, Pakistan against the local Talibans, Afghanistan against the actual Talibans, The Fateh regime of Palestine against Hamas, Sudan dealing with the Darfur crisis, while other Muslim countries are also engaged in constant mind games from the rest of the world. With such problems at hand, Muslim rulers are not only already exhausted, the majority of them is not considered to be practicing Muslim by other Muslims. That, eventually – and quite rightly – becomes the job of the general Muslim population.
The plight of a common Muslim today is that he or she loves Islam but is not ready to follow it. People who don’t even offer Friday prayers still love Islam, but only as someone would love his birthplace. This is the same reason why we get to receive long email chains proclaiming Will Smith or Michael Jackson’s acceptance of Islam, there’s an inner desire in each and every one of the 1 billion strong Muslims to serve Islam, to preach its teachings, to show the world the correct side of Islam. However, we’re not inclined to first follow the same principles in our lives. We see someone with a beard and say “Masha ALLAH” and then step into the barber’s shop to fashion that goatee on our chin; we hear the Azaan and sit upright, and when it finishes, go back to the same reclining position. But the desire to do good doesn’t die, it may be dormant, but it’s there without argument. So when such an incident occurs, we feel extremely agitated, and with no knowledge of how to handle things, eventually end up following charlatans who convince them that killing any “Kafir” is the only way to salvation. Hence you see the suicide bombings, the beheadings of journalists and other instruments of terrorism. And unless we, the common Muslim, is educated enough, there’s no way we can convince the non-believers that for all the man-made problems created in this world today, Islam has the solutions for all of them.
This is the second part of a three part series, please find the first part here and the last part here.
Protests
This is the first part of a three part series, please find the other parts here and here.
The Indus Highway is one of the busiest national routes connecting several important cities of Pakistan with one another. But the angry mob that shut it down for traffic was probably oblivious to this fact. The closure presumably forced dozens of commuters on either sides of the blockade to look for alternate routes or – even worse – wait indefinitely until the crowd scatters. The reason for the protest apparently was the reprinting of the blasphemous cartoons by the Danish papers. The result of the protest? As always, some burnt effigies, a few items set ablaze, broken windows etc. of which definitely none was a property of the sketcher, the paper, Denmark or even any foreigner. Those things must have belonged to one of our own people, who probably would have ended up having definitely negative thoughts about the mob – so much for making friends!
Several time zones away, the cartoonist responsible for the provocation was probably ensconced in the safety of his home. The papers publishing the trash are adamant on their so-called freedom of expression, the Danish government is unperturbed by the global outcry in the Muslim world, even after the threat of some Muslim countries to ban Danish products, and all that the Muslim governments can do is call the Danish envoy to the foreign office and “vehemently” protest to him, then asked him on tea and discussed the prospects of new trade scenarios with Denmark.While all of this is going on, a new controversy is cooking in the financial capital of the world. In a busy Manhattan street, New york, a new building is being built. Nothing new and nothing wrong with that so far, except that it’s shaped as a cube and is colored black. And if you still don’t smell a rat, here’s the killer punch, the building’s being called Apple Mecca, and apart from being a showroom to Macintosh’s various products, is said to have a liquor bar of its own. A move that’s certain to draw further protest from Muslims all across the globe. More fervent protests are expected in response to this fresh episode of deliberately hurting Muslim sentiment. So one can predict that more violence is going to follow and again, the rioters will vent their anger on local properties instead of doing some meaningful protest.
This is the first part of a three part series, please find the other parts here and here.
Hat tip: Owais @ ExxSol
Friday, April 21, 2006
Friday, March 10, 2006
Helping the helpline!
It is 7:30 in the morning, the developers in “Everyone’s workstation Inc.” has been up all night to deploy a critical patch for a bug that has caused heavy losses for the users. And after 18 hours the patch is finally lined up for deployment, but to the utter disappointment of the tech lead, the internet line is dead. The modem shows the broadband line is connected but somehow the upload is not working. Furious, he calls the ISP to know what’s happening. The phone connects, an instrumental follows, after which the IVR spells out the different options and advised to hold for the operator, he does the latter. Precious minutes ticking away, he has to upload this patch, has to confirm all things are working perfectly, no damage has been done to an existing functionality, and then come back again today after what could be only minutes of sleep. There’s a click, the operator speaks, “Welcome to Your Broadband, how can I help you?” “Yes,” says the developer, “I need to know if there’s a problem in the internet connection.” “May I know your account title sir?” he tells the specifications. “And you say the problem is with the socket connections only?” “To me it seems yes.” “Sir I’ll have to check with our technical support for that, please hold for a moment.” “Listen, can I speak to them myself? This is very urgent and I need to know what the problem is,” the programmer is becoming impatient. “Sorry sir, this is not our policy sir, please wait for a moment and I’ll be right back.” The instrumental continues, he doesn’t want to hear it but that wasn’t a choice. He stares at the clock, 7:50, only and hour before a new day starts, and by the looks of things, it didn’t need extensive guesswork to know what’s in store for him. A new instrumental begins, still no sign of a human voice. Hopelessly, he hangs up the phone, but only to call back after 5 minutes.
The same long IVR message is poured down his ears; he has to wait for the operator. A click and a “hello” are heard, a new voice, he has to grumble the issue again. “So you think the problem is only with your upload?” “Well you should be telling this right? Wake up your neighbor and ask him what he found out from your tech support!” He’s loosing patience, wiping his forehead; he glances at the clock, 8:20. The hustle and bustle on the street starts to break through the quiet of the city center. “Sir our technical support only arrives after 9:00 - Please call later - may I be of any further help –good day sir!” he wished it could be the case. He gets back to his computer, his mind blank, pressed the upload button, and voila! It worked. He can now allow a smile, the helpline operator had no clue what the problem was, and that it had been fixed.
May be this story sounds much too exaggerated to some readers, but many would relate to this story in some ways. In each case, the feeling of helplessness talking to the helpline is a common sight, in situations when you know that the guy at the other end of the conversation is as oblivious to the problem and its solution as you are, and despite the good intentions, he can’t help. The purpose of this write up is not to put the blame of every bad piece of code on the ISP’s, but to show that being a little proactive and candid would do a world of good to all the stakeholders. And it’s not just the ISP’s whose technical support needs improvement, it’s just about every company who deals with customers, it’s a constant process because no system is perfect forever.
Earlier this year, we marked the 10th anniversary of the advent of the internet in our country. Many things associated with it have changed – speed, tariff, technology, application, coverage. But the one thing that remains unchanged is the helpline support. Little innovation, if any, has been applied to this side of the corporate functions. It’s ironic to see that the very people who put a face to the company are not sure what they’re doing at their job. And if a little exaggeration is allowed, helpline staff is treated in the same sarcastic way that Indian civil services used to treat officers on special duty. May be technical support is too expensive to be wasted to be waiting for a potential phone call. But ask a disgruntled customer, if the person on the phone is not the one who’ll solve the problem, then he should not be there. Most users are savvy enough to understand a technical problem and why is it taking too long. What happens when a non-technical person, deals such situation is that in an effort to save the company’s image, they try to sugar coat the problem, misjudge the estimated time of resolution, and eventually, with the best of intentions, misguide the user.
Take some time reading the vision statement of any company, the most emphasis is on customer satisfaction, and rightly so. However, the same fervor and zeal is not reflected when it comes to helping those very customers whose satisfaction is the cornerstone of the business. What is the other way to make customers happy? Good service, maybe? The need is to understand that every company should put its best people available where there is a direct link with the customers, called the touch points.
A few programming gimmicks wouldn’t do much harm either. If a customer is automatically redirected to the same person who attended the last call, a lot of time can be saved in explaining and understanding the problem. Secondly, digital exchanges have a feature called caller id, making use of it by connecting that to the customer databases will also make the conversation more productive. Cellular companies have got this thing right at least, every good company out there should follow suit. Finally, the correct status of the resolution has to be made clear to the customer, a thing will take only so much time to be fixed, and promising an unrealistic timeline on basis of assumptions is a fatal error. And playing music is good, if it’s not long enough.
According to a marketing research, the cost of creating new customers is 10-11 times higher than the cost of retaining old ones. Visionary companies know that each time a customer hangs up on you feeling dissatisfied is a customer lost. And only a few things spread quicker than a negative word of mouth. So why not put the right people on the right place. What makes companies like Amazon, Google, NetFlix, GE, HSBC and so many others so special? Their clientele is insurmountable, their portfolio is huge, still, there’s only a handful of negative customer reviews for these companies. The reason is simple, they listen to the customers. Even though most of them have outsourced their call centers, they still make sure that those call centers are taking the best care of their clients. In the customer support business, Empathy is the virtue, apathy is a vice. So let’s help the helpline, shall we?
The same long IVR message is poured down his ears; he has to wait for the operator. A click and a “hello” are heard, a new voice, he has to grumble the issue again. “So you think the problem is only with your upload?” “Well you should be telling this right? Wake up your neighbor and ask him what he found out from your tech support!” He’s loosing patience, wiping his forehead; he glances at the clock, 8:20. The hustle and bustle on the street starts to break through the quiet of the city center. “Sir our technical support only arrives after 9:00 - Please call later - may I be of any further help –good day sir!” he wished it could be the case. He gets back to his computer, his mind blank, pressed the upload button, and voila! It worked. He can now allow a smile, the helpline operator had no clue what the problem was, and that it had been fixed.
May be this story sounds much too exaggerated to some readers, but many would relate to this story in some ways. In each case, the feeling of helplessness talking to the helpline is a common sight, in situations when you know that the guy at the other end of the conversation is as oblivious to the problem and its solution as you are, and despite the good intentions, he can’t help. The purpose of this write up is not to put the blame of every bad piece of code on the ISP’s, but to show that being a little proactive and candid would do a world of good to all the stakeholders. And it’s not just the ISP’s whose technical support needs improvement, it’s just about every company who deals with customers, it’s a constant process because no system is perfect forever.
Earlier this year, we marked the 10th anniversary of the advent of the internet in our country. Many things associated with it have changed – speed, tariff, technology, application, coverage. But the one thing that remains unchanged is the helpline support. Little innovation, if any, has been applied to this side of the corporate functions. It’s ironic to see that the very people who put a face to the company are not sure what they’re doing at their job. And if a little exaggeration is allowed, helpline staff is treated in the same sarcastic way that Indian civil services used to treat officers on special duty. May be technical support is too expensive to be wasted to be waiting for a potential phone call. But ask a disgruntled customer, if the person on the phone is not the one who’ll solve the problem, then he should not be there. Most users are savvy enough to understand a technical problem and why is it taking too long. What happens when a non-technical person, deals such situation is that in an effort to save the company’s image, they try to sugar coat the problem, misjudge the estimated time of resolution, and eventually, with the best of intentions, misguide the user.
Take some time reading the vision statement of any company, the most emphasis is on customer satisfaction, and rightly so. However, the same fervor and zeal is not reflected when it comes to helping those very customers whose satisfaction is the cornerstone of the business. What is the other way to make customers happy? Good service, maybe? The need is to understand that every company should put its best people available where there is a direct link with the customers, called the touch points.
A few programming gimmicks wouldn’t do much harm either. If a customer is automatically redirected to the same person who attended the last call, a lot of time can be saved in explaining and understanding the problem. Secondly, digital exchanges have a feature called caller id, making use of it by connecting that to the customer databases will also make the conversation more productive. Cellular companies have got this thing right at least, every good company out there should follow suit. Finally, the correct status of the resolution has to be made clear to the customer, a thing will take only so much time to be fixed, and promising an unrealistic timeline on basis of assumptions is a fatal error. And playing music is good, if it’s not long enough.
According to a marketing research, the cost of creating new customers is 10-11 times higher than the cost of retaining old ones. Visionary companies know that each time a customer hangs up on you feeling dissatisfied is a customer lost. And only a few things spread quicker than a negative word of mouth. So why not put the right people on the right place. What makes companies like Amazon, Google, NetFlix, GE, HSBC and so many others so special? Their clientele is insurmountable, their portfolio is huge, still, there’s only a handful of negative customer reviews for these companies. The reason is simple, they listen to the customers. Even though most of them have outsourced their call centers, they still make sure that those call centers are taking the best care of their clients. In the customer support business, Empathy is the virtue, apathy is a vice. So let’s help the helpline, shall we?
Thursday, August 11, 2005
I "Rote" IT!
“A program is a set of instructions in a language understood by a computer; used to direct the operations of a computer.” This was what students of class V had been muttering for the last half an hour from the book, “Jump-start Computers”. Some other kids were also there whispering indecipherable incantations from the book, bringing a touch of Hogwarts - the wizardry school of Harry Potter - to the kids’ study room. The kids were diligently trying to memorise the numerous definitions spread across the book as if trying to etch the words in their memory. On asking them whether they actually knew what a computer program looks like, the answer was, “it’s a round mirror like thing with a hole in the middle to let the air pass”, leaving the inquirer dumbfounded.
Well, part of the above lines has been modified adding the intentional pun to enable the reader to understand what this feature is all about. But it’s not much different from the usual condition of our education system. Over the years, young and grown ups alike have been made to adhere to rote learning instead of understanding the intrinsic meaning of what they’re learning. One feels this is because most parents prefer the so called English medium schools over the government run Urdu Schools which, apart from few, have a questionable standard. However, English being the second language of most children makes it very difficult for them to understand the actual meaning of the content and for doing well in the exams in such a case, rote learning provides an established solution.
Owais Anwer, a Software engineer in a local IT firm, had the opportunity to tutor some 9th grade students a couple of years back. According to him, the usual way of the teachers was that for the first 3 quarters in a one-hour class, they write lines of code on the board which the students jot down without many questions. While in the last quarter, the students run the same program on a computer, which naturally, runs without any error, since the only error there could be was in noting from the board. According to Shariq Muhammad, another software engineer who opted for CS in class 9th, the students were made to work on only those parts of the practical which have a higher probability of appearing in the board exams. One feels this kind of technique destroys the whole idea of teaching computer science in elementary classes. Computer science is totally different from other course subjects like history, literature or even science subjects like biology and chemistry. It’s more analogous to Mathematics since it requires problem solving, which consequently needs one to have proper concepts about the subject. The thing that sets it apart from Maths is that Computers are an ever-evolving phenomenon. Newer technologies keep popping up making it very difficult for one to stay on top of that. Still, being a good problem solver is so important that all the top notch IT companies look for prospective employees with natural ability to solve problems and the willingness to learn new things, not the ones with greater knowledge of syntax in any language.
Watching young kids working on a computer, one can clearly see that they’re most interested in games. The only serious software that most kids are attracted to is a program called “Paint”! The point is, kids are more involved in software that shows them doing something. Huge software applications with tremendous programming power but little graphic output are of no value to children. This is precisely why computer games, no matter how primitive, have always been most popular amongst kids. However, what they’re taught in the school is a boring three line definition which they may not even understand, with little graphics and apparently no hands-on encounter. Most schools have a separate head in their fee vouchers labelled “computer fee”, but on inspecting the lab, one can see that the machines these kids are working on are quite backward in comparison to the computers most of them are using back home. Also, there are only a handful of teachers who actually try to invoke creativity within the kids. Shariq recalls his best teacher was in class 7th when they worked on “Logo” - a graphic tool which has a turtle in the middle which one can program to move around plotting a line on its trail. The teacher required them to create graphics from a sketch which they made themselves first on paper and then on the computer. The sheer excitement of recreating something made the guy their best teacher, even if he made the kids do all the hard work. But isn’t it what a good teacher should do? Tell the kids what they need to achieve, and stand aside to let them do their work, giving his input only when required. In fact, this is the same kind of attitude project managers at serious IT companies assume; let the programmers know what they need to accomplish and then just facilitate them to work towards their goal.
However, many teachers fail to envisage that at the elementary level. They do all the hard work themselves, writing code lines on the board and selecting practicals which have a higher probability to appear in the exams. Probably most teachers empathize with the students since they already have a huge workload so they relieve them at some point. It has to be said this is not a favour that doesn’t do a lot of good to the students since they advance to higher classes without learning much. Also, a large number of teachers is not highly qualified, some only in their college while teaching computer science. “One cannot totally blame the teachers since the average pay for a computer science teacher, or for that matter any teacher in the primary schools is as low as 3-4 thousands a month”, this is what Sheheryar Azim, who works in the same company as Shariq, and has taught the class 9th students when he was still in college. “Also, why someone who had spent thousands of rupees on his degree would opt for a job in primary school for a handful of money. Would you leave your current job and start teaching? At least I won’t.” was his response.
If one browses the Computer text books from elementary classes to the higher classes, there is not much difference among them. All of them start with a definition of computer, followed by definitions of programs, memory, registers and so on. Every book has the same content with very little change. This is quite contrary to what it should have been envisioned.
The government is now trying to revolutionise the education system and one hopes computer education has its fair share of attention this time around. If our educationists desire to groom computer scientists from the elementary level, they need to reshape the whole computer science curriculum making it more purposeful, starting from being simple in the lower classes and raising the bar towards the higher classes. There is no dearth of Pakistani IT professionals who have written books for the foreign publishers, the textbook board can hire them to write the textbooks, so that the younger readers may look up to the writers and be inspired. So that when the same kids enter a university seeking a computer science degree, they have an already strong foundation of the subject and by the time they will pursue a master’s degree, they would be working on real world problems, after all, Google was a university project by two blokes. Teachers and parents alike should be let to air their grievances, have everyone on board before formulating a policy. If we are able to formulate a more focused CS curriculum, we may be able to farm such talent, and a home-grown Google or a Microsoft may not be a far cry at all.
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Unplugged
"Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers," so said Jimmy Breslin, the legendary American columnist. And as i see it, most of the articles that would feature in this month's internet magazines of the country would reflect a strong feeling of admonishment thanks to the problems faced by Internet users across the country after last month’s breakdown of the SEA-ME-WE (Southeast Asia-Middle East-Western Europe) 3 cable that provides nearly 80 percent access to the Net. Work at government and especially in private offices slumped after PTCL announced they had no immediate backup for the virtual blackout.
Such is the scale of the mess caused by a single cable lying on the seabed of Arabian Sea, making a mockery of all official assertions that of providing the country with a flawless connectivity. SEA-ME-WE 3, as we all know the 40,000 KM long optic fiber cable, provides connectivity to as many as 34 countries. This is not the first time that it has had problems in the submarine section. In the November of 2000, Singapore and Australia, whom one would expect to be more technology savvy than a toddler like Pakistan, were almost cut off from the whole world just like we are these days. Still both countries had a good backup connection, which was up in no time. There were also similar problems in April and July of 2003 when the cable was damaged in isolated events. Pakistan and some other countries in the region were affected, but the problem was promptly identified and the connection restored. At that time, the longest break in connection was 12 hours whereas this time around, it has taken well over 10 days only to identify the problem.
Software companies are but a small fraction of the victims, but for banks, the problem could not have come at a worse time—it was their closing week of the fiscal year. Also if airlines think they’re the most affected victims, ask the scores of call centers spread across the country. No other business would have been more devastated by this Internet crisis than a call center for it needs a dedicated IP for its operations. And if material losses are hard to measure, there’s no limit to the loss of credibility for these startups. Attracting foreign investors was never easy anyway, but after this kind of Net crisis, keeping that list of foreign clientele is now a tough task altogether. No investor deserves surprises like this and with our rates already higher than what’s being offered just across the border, the call center industry seems sure to be struggling in the coming months. Potential investors backed off enduring a loss of nearly 10 million dollars which would have helped the inflated economy. So imagine how much present and potential business might have been lost simply because there was no back-up link to the country’s backbone connection. The scale of losses to the call center business was so huge that they had to submit a complaint to the government to intervene and direct the authorities to give priority to their traffic.
ISP helpdesks are helpless as well. One can only empathize with the poor guys who had to face cult music when disgruntled customers lambasted them for incapableness—they got the thrashing for something that was not even their fault. By the first Saturday of July, that is the sixth day of the crisis, quite a few ISP’s were supporting either Socks services or http, one used for all kinds of file and data transfer and IM software, and the other used for browsing. So if one needed to browse something, he needed to connect to a “browsing ISP” or vice versa. This is something the support staff mostly isn’t aware of. Most of them know the routine stuff that sorts out most problems with domestic internet users. But when it comes to network troubleshooting, there’s a lot to be desired in terms of domain knowledge on the ISP support end.
Couldn’t it all have been avoided by just having a good enough backup? After all, backups are the backbone of any professional organization. Ask any programming guru, any network or database administrator or any smart data store manager and you’ll know they have a fair collection of backups. So when a new version fails or if a potential problem in an older version actually pops up, they have something to hold themselves together. Every software company has at least one back up Internet connection, or at least one connection available on a phone call. That’s something we PC-kids call a ‘Simple Failover Strategy.’ To put it straight, in the internet world, if you’re not backing up your work, you’re sure to land in trouble. Ironically, these simple rules could not make it to the priority list of our IT think tanks, and that too at the federal level. With SMW 3 already overloaded, no alternative connectivity solutions were sought as late as July last year when construction of SEA-ME-WE 4, a $500 million project was approved by a consortium of 14 countries. Pakistan was to bear five percent of the cost for its share in the bandwidth. The project is estimated to be completed in December this year. Meanwhile, alternative connectivity was provided via Fibre Link Around Globe (FLAG), a smaller capacity cable with fewer recipients. But with the recent breakdown in the Internet connectivity, one feels all these arrangements are in vain.
When these lines are being written, this is the 10th day of virtual Internet blackout in the country, the fault area has been narrowed in to a 20 km piece. The weather is severe and the testing requires each and every meter to be tested. So it’s quite logical that the technicians have forecasted another 5 days for fully repairing the damage. Fascinatingly, our IT ministry has forecasted only a day is left for the problem to resolve. The base of their claim is unknown, but it only goes to show that it is the same attitude of dissipating misleading information that has lead the country to its worst ever internet crisis. Attracting foreign and local investors by spending huge sums of tax-payers’ money on the backing of such ill-planned network was certainly a wrong call whose damages are almost irreparable. For a country which claims over 10 million unique web surfers, a single connection to the outside world was thought sufficient. What could happen if the solitary connection breaks was anyone’s guess and now experience. And when something as inevitable actually materializes, one helplessly recalls what we know as Murphy’s Law which says, “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong!”
Such is the scale of the mess caused by a single cable lying on the seabed of Arabian Sea, making a mockery of all official assertions that of providing the country with a flawless connectivity. SEA-ME-WE 3, as we all know the 40,000 KM long optic fiber cable, provides connectivity to as many as 34 countries. This is not the first time that it has had problems in the submarine section. In the November of 2000, Singapore and Australia, whom one would expect to be more technology savvy than a toddler like Pakistan, were almost cut off from the whole world just like we are these days. Still both countries had a good backup connection, which was up in no time. There were also similar problems in April and July of 2003 when the cable was damaged in isolated events. Pakistan and some other countries in the region were affected, but the problem was promptly identified and the connection restored. At that time, the longest break in connection was 12 hours whereas this time around, it has taken well over 10 days only to identify the problem.
Software companies are but a small fraction of the victims, but for banks, the problem could not have come at a worse time—it was their closing week of the fiscal year. Also if airlines think they’re the most affected victims, ask the scores of call centers spread across the country. No other business would have been more devastated by this Internet crisis than a call center for it needs a dedicated IP for its operations. And if material losses are hard to measure, there’s no limit to the loss of credibility for these startups. Attracting foreign investors was never easy anyway, but after this kind of Net crisis, keeping that list of foreign clientele is now a tough task altogether. No investor deserves surprises like this and with our rates already higher than what’s being offered just across the border, the call center industry seems sure to be struggling in the coming months. Potential investors backed off enduring a loss of nearly 10 million dollars which would have helped the inflated economy. So imagine how much present and potential business might have been lost simply because there was no back-up link to the country’s backbone connection. The scale of losses to the call center business was so huge that they had to submit a complaint to the government to intervene and direct the authorities to give priority to their traffic.
ISP helpdesks are helpless as well. One can only empathize with the poor guys who had to face cult music when disgruntled customers lambasted them for incapableness—they got the thrashing for something that was not even their fault. By the first Saturday of July, that is the sixth day of the crisis, quite a few ISP’s were supporting either Socks services or http, one used for all kinds of file and data transfer and IM software, and the other used for browsing. So if one needed to browse something, he needed to connect to a “browsing ISP” or vice versa. This is something the support staff mostly isn’t aware of. Most of them know the routine stuff that sorts out most problems with domestic internet users. But when it comes to network troubleshooting, there’s a lot to be desired in terms of domain knowledge on the ISP support end.
Couldn’t it all have been avoided by just having a good enough backup? After all, backups are the backbone of any professional organization. Ask any programming guru, any network or database administrator or any smart data store manager and you’ll know they have a fair collection of backups. So when a new version fails or if a potential problem in an older version actually pops up, they have something to hold themselves together. Every software company has at least one back up Internet connection, or at least one connection available on a phone call. That’s something we PC-kids call a ‘Simple Failover Strategy.’ To put it straight, in the internet world, if you’re not backing up your work, you’re sure to land in trouble. Ironically, these simple rules could not make it to the priority list of our IT think tanks, and that too at the federal level. With SMW 3 already overloaded, no alternative connectivity solutions were sought as late as July last year when construction of SEA-ME-WE 4, a $500 million project was approved by a consortium of 14 countries. Pakistan was to bear five percent of the cost for its share in the bandwidth. The project is estimated to be completed in December this year. Meanwhile, alternative connectivity was provided via Fibre Link Around Globe (FLAG), a smaller capacity cable with fewer recipients. But with the recent breakdown in the Internet connectivity, one feels all these arrangements are in vain.
When these lines are being written, this is the 10th day of virtual Internet blackout in the country, the fault area has been narrowed in to a 20 km piece. The weather is severe and the testing requires each and every meter to be tested. So it’s quite logical that the technicians have forecasted another 5 days for fully repairing the damage. Fascinatingly, our IT ministry has forecasted only a day is left for the problem to resolve. The base of their claim is unknown, but it only goes to show that it is the same attitude of dissipating misleading information that has lead the country to its worst ever internet crisis. Attracting foreign and local investors by spending huge sums of tax-payers’ money on the backing of such ill-planned network was certainly a wrong call whose damages are almost irreparable. For a country which claims over 10 million unique web surfers, a single connection to the outside world was thought sufficient. What could happen if the solitary connection breaks was anyone’s guess and now experience. And when something as inevitable actually materializes, one helplessly recalls what we know as Murphy’s Law which says, “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong!”
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Dooced For Blogging
This post has been published in Spider magazine's May issue and respecting their intellectual property rights, i'm removing this post from here. Will post a link to their online version of the issue as soon as i get one from them! Thanks!
Update:here's the link to the article:
Update:here's the link to the article:
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