Another Mobile Snatching (stealing) Incident

Someone I know went to Park Towers (Clifton) last weekend. While coming out of one of the shops she discovered that her mobile phone (which she had kept in her purse) had vanished! She rushed to the security guards on duty and, even after frantic appeals for help, they showed complete apathy. What is the use of all those online cameras when the security staff is so un-cooperative?

Anyway, later on she recalled that while entering one of the shops she had bumped into two 'burqa'-clad ladies. It looked like they had nicked the phone from her purse. She has informed CPLC on the cell phone snatching helpline (5682222) but nothing has happened yet.

For the general public: Beware of burqa-clad ladies! Just last night I saw a TV interview of a police official (on Tariq Road) and he said that there are "women gangs" operating in the city, picking pockets and catching people unawares! Prevention is better than cure, so be VERY careful.

May Allah protect us all against unfortunate incidents. Ameen!

NADRA Swift Registration Center – Nazimabad

It was one of those unfortunate times (again) when one is forced to visit some government office for documentation.

Last Saturday (17th June, 2006), I visited the NADRA Swift Registration Center located in Nazimabad. I was appalled by the conditions over there. The first thing you need to do when you get there is to go to the Information counter. There was a long line at the information counter. Once you are done with that (luckily in 20-30 minutes) you will know what you exactly need to do after that

I needed to make a Child Registration Certificate, or CRC for short (this was formerly known as Form B). Let me note the requirements here, so it saves some people the hassle of the first step. The following documents are required:

• NIC of father (original)
• NIC of mother (original)
• Union Council Birth Certificate (original)

Keep 1 photocopy of each of these documents as well, just in case. I guess one of the parents has to go (in person) for the application because they do finger-printing again (God knows why). The process takes 10-15 working days, after which you should "theoretically" be able to collect the CRC.

Anyway, I got into the "token" line and was fortunate enough to receive the token in just about 1 hour. Now, the thing is, the Information & Token counters are both situated inside the NADRA unless they have the token.

So now I was the privileged one… I had the "token". In I went swiftly, past the guard, waving my token in front of him, feeling high and mighty.. he was powerless to stop me now Little did I know that my troubles were to start from here onwards. It was extremely hot and stuffy inside the office. There were lots of people waiting and lots of NADRA staff working inside on lots of heat-generating computers! The CO2 levels were crazy! You see, the interior space in the office was supposed to be air-conditioned, but there were no air-conditioners installed (or at-least none were working). There was no provision for ventilation inside. 5 minutes max and I was out of that place! I chose to wait outside.

I got my work done though and applied for the CRC successfully. I will not elaborate on the agony I faced later on (once my token was called). In summary, I would just like to say that the NADRA staff was very co-operative. Considering that they really are working in such a tough, unhealthy and in-humane environment, its amazing that they are able to keep their head! The public just has to endure a few hours of agony but the NADRA guys, they are there for a living. Credit goes to the staff operating the NADRA office.

Having said that the fault lies with the current NADRA management. If they cannot install air-conditioning, they could at-least make some provision for ventilation for the staff and the general public suffering over there!

Karachi Stock Exchange – Recovery

The KSE index has finally made a comeback after a record breaking fall yesterday (and during most of the past week). The index rose by approximately +350 points and was hovering around the 9,000 mark today. Finally investors can breathe a sigh of relief after sitting on the edge of their seats all week! By the way, no one knows the exact reason why the market crashed on Wednesday. SECP keeps beating the drum about transparency… where is it now?

DawnClassified.com website is down

I have been trying to reach the Dawn Classified website and it looks like it has been down for quite a few days. Wonder when it will be back up? Maybe it was hacked? Anyway, it was a pretty useful website. I thought I'd be able to work around this and access the classified pages on the Dawn ePaper website, but alas, for some bizarre reason, classified pages are not hosted on ePaper. So if you want to access Dawn Classified on the web, you will have to wait indefinitely.

Desktop Linux – Ordered Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake)

I am very excited about the latest Ubuntu release. This is a major release for a long time to come – released on 1st June. You can order Ubuntu for free using the Ubuntu ShipIt service and thank God it works for Karachi too! I had ordered the previous version back in February, 2006. The CDs had arrived within 2 weeks.

Just checked the status of my current shipping request:

20 CDs requested in 2006-05-31. 20 CDs approved and sent to the shipping company in 2006-06-06. Please note requests usually take from 4 to 6 weeks to deliver, depending on the country of shipping.

The latest release is called Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Long Term Support). LTS means that the desktop version would be supported for 3 years and the server version for 5 years straight, as follows:

Ubuntu is freely available, including security updates for five years on servers, with no restrictions on usage and no requirement to purchase support contracts or subscriptions per deployment.

If you want a gentle start to Linux on the desktop, Ubuntu is the way to go. Order now, its just a click away!

(Ubuntu is Gnome based, but if you prefer KDE you can order here: . If you don't know what that means ignore this line)

A Karachi blog that passed away…

It’s interesting to see how local blogs rise and fall, apparently because of lack of consistent interest or time.
Doing some research on local blogs, what do you come across when you do a Google search on “Karachi blog”? The first hit is the following:

This site has been defaced, not once but many times. I wonder where the admins and contributors disappeared. Anyway, coming back to my previous view, is it really worth it to host a blog like that on your own? Isn’t it better to avail free services offered by nice people at WordPress or Blogger?

Delayed! Karachi University External Candidates Examination (2006)

Well, the inevitable happened. Examinations have been delayed! According to the information I got on the phone, admit cards would be mailed by 25th June, 2006 and exams should start somewhere near the first week of July, 2006.

Exhibition: Consumer Electronics Asia

There is a consumer electronics exhibition scheduled to be held between 9-11 August 2006 at the Karachi Expo Centre.They also have a website, but not much information is available there. Could be interesting though.

Unfortunately it will fall on weekdays – Wednesday, Thursday & Friday. Timings are 10:00 am – 7:00 pm.

Plight of a mobile snatching victim

A Karachi blog can never be complete without a mobile snatching incident. So here goes, let’s get directly to the story and the ordeal thereafter.

The incident
A couple of weeks back a colleague of mine was walking from his home at 8:30am in the morning towards a nearby bus stop. Two guys on a bike held him up on gunpoint (on a main, double road) and asked for his mobile. He had no option but to hand it over and they went off with it. There were some shops nearby but all the shopkeepers did was to laugh at his plight in a cruel way… maybe the lower-class workers rejoice in contempt or jealousy when they see some harm come to someone of higher stature? Whatever it is… this was a downright inhumane way to behave, to say the least!

Indifference of the police
Anyway, baffled and worried he came to office and called 15 – the all famous Karachi Police Emergency Helpline. The fellow on 15 gave him a 7 digit number and told him to call the office of his local ‘Madadgar’ (local Police Station?).

After a lot of redials and hours of agony he did manage to get through to his ‘Madadgars’ (you see, a single phone line for the whole area can be quite busy). So, he narrated the whole story again on the Madadgar line. The guy on the other line listened and gave him yet ANOTHER phone number to call and register his mobile snatching complaint. This really was the last straw. My friend asked the guy why he had to call a third number because he had already registered his complaint on 15 and the local Madadgar, as directed. The Madadgar fellow told my friend that he himself would be calling that number anyway, so it would not make a difference. It would be better that my friend should call directly, he suggested. This turned out to be the CPLC mobile theft helpline. My friend never could get through on it. Apparently this helpline was setup with a lot of publicity in January, 2005:
KARACHI: Help line to check theft of cell phones launched

No wonder it’s always busy, a single line for the whole of Karachi… what were they thinking??

He did however fill this form on the CPLC website but he has not been contacted since: IMEI Complain Form

Well, that was the end of it all and what was the result? Hours wasted chasing the Police and CPLC for absolutely nothing! No wonder cell phone snatching is so rampant in Karachi, as it goes unchecked by the police, CPLC and mobile companies. I can see no improvement in this situation in the near future.

I do, however, encourage any future mobile snatching victims to at least report the incident to the police, you never know and there is no harm in cooperating with them – this is your responsibility as a citizen.

Comparison of free online blogging services

A few days back I decided to start a blog. I did not want to get into the hassle of setting up my own, nor did I want to spend any money on hosting one, so I started doing some research on free online blogging services. I could not find a single article on comparison of such services, so I thought I’d write my own when done, to help people who are starting of with this. The following services are the most popular ones and I will discuss only these:

• Blogger
• Xanga
• WordPress
• LiveJournal

Blogger

This is by far the most popular blogging service (owned by Google). Besides the normal online blogging features, it provides the option of publishing blogs on any FTP/SFTP site (if you want to host it on your own, that is).

Looks like the popularity turned out to be a bit of a weakness for it. Thanks to PIE, all blogs on Blogger (which are hosted on the blogspot.com domain) got banned in Pakistan due to a few blogs displaying blasphemous cartoons. This is sheer madness! Why should 999,998 blogs be blocked in Pakistan for 2 bad blogs on the domain? This is more of PIE 's technological incompetence than abiding the law. I mean, why couldn't they just ban the bad ones? Here is why:

The government of Pakistan currently has a simplistic IP based filtering procedure in place, and since all websites hosted on blogspot resolve to the same IP address, they all have been blocked.

Source: Wikipedia

Ok, so in short, this ruled out Blogger for me. There would be no point in posting blogs that no one would read, would there?

LiveJournal

The interface was cluttered and messy. The available templates were messy too. Overall – an eyesore. I can’t stand ugly websites! So after making a journal over there and playing around for a few hours I opted to dump it.

Xanga

Same messy, confusing look. If you want pure blogging, the “social networking” element really produces unnecessary clutter in administration and display. One important feature that I did come across on Xanga was that they allow a little bit of Javascript on the blogs, but even that is a restricted set of constructs that you can use. So out went Xanga!

WordPress

This was one of the first ones I evaluated after Blogger. I got a bit scared after reading their FAQ about restrictions on Javascript and stuff – sounded very strict. But after a little bit of research on the options available on other services, I came to the conclusion that it was not that bad. Almost all free blogging services place such restrictions. Furthermore, its impossible to put interactive, dynamic, javascript based advertisements on blogs (like Google AdSense, although Blogger allows this but it was already ruled out, remember?). So if you are looking for making money from a free online blogging service, I guess it will be very hard to do or maybe there is an alternate way, but needs more experience and research.

The thing that led me to choose WordPress was the crystal clear interface, clean templates and aesthetic appeal. Furthermore, the help and the FAQs really turned out to be very helpful.

WordPress also has a nice statistics feature that I will be exploring. Stats include Referrers, Top Posts, Search Engine Terms and some graphical views.

Ah, and one more thing, it’s based on OSS… so that’s cool, doesn’t make me feel guilty and doesn’t give me the creeps all night.

The real test of WordPress would be in the days to come, but I guess I will stick to it after considering the options that I have