MW2

 

Fuck you Activision. Fuck you Infinity Ward.

Seriously, fuck you.

Zaid Hamid Parody

I’ve seen this lot a couple of times on the telly but they’ve been fairly uninspiring (probably not helped by my poor grasp of  Urdu). However, this, is sheer perfection. I actually laughed out loud on a lot of moments throughout this.

 

Monty Python

Everytime I read or hear about an organization like the PLF I simply can’t help but grin (or laugh) because the following keeps playing out in my head:

Hemingway and the six word story

I’m not a big Hemingway fan. For some reason or another, his disjointed literary style really grates me. I’m not saying he’s a shit author, or simply because he, as Faulkner said, “He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.” Far from it, in fact, because here I side firmly with Hemingway. It’s just that I can’t get past his unique writing style.

Anyway, as the story goes, Hemingway was once in a bar dared to write the fabled six word story. This is what he came up with:

“For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn.”

That is simply stunning.

Hendrix

I really need to build up my patience levels. What makes everything worse is that when I do stick to something I end up learning it fairly quickly, as opposed to the ‘ages’ i think it’ll take me. But that first hurdle is what seems to stump me.

Unfortunately that hurdle isn’t present only when I’m trying to learn Hendrix’s Little Wing. Instead it seems to be a permanent fixture in my psychological existence, showing up at just about everything I try to do – music, writing, studying, reading. So far, I’ve been shambolic at trying to overcome it, which ofcourse beckons the unwanted, frightening thought of whether I’ll ever overcome it.

Anyway, Hendrix is god.

Information Is Beautiful

This is a brilliant site:

Information Is Beautiful

Basically it visualizes data in all sorts of interesting and ingenious ways..

oh snap!

First: Sojourner

Second:

Monday, August 24, 2009
This is with reference to Dr A Q Khan’s column “Science of computers — part I” which appeared in your pages on Aug 19.

1. Dr Khan writes: “The computer is an essential part of 21st century life. Computer science is a fast-moving subject that gives rise to a range of interesting and often challenging problems. The implementation of today’s complex computer systems requires the skills of a knowledgeable and versatile computer scientist. Artificial intelligence — the study of intelligent behaviour — is having an increasing reference on computer system design. Distributed systems, networks and the internet are now central to the study of computing, presenting both technical and social challenges.”

Now compare this to the first paragraph of Undergraduate Prospectus 2009, University of Sussex(www.sussex.ac.uk/units/publications/ugrad2009/subjects/computing):

“Computing is an essential part of 21st-century life, and is an exceptionally fast-moving subject that gives rise to a range of interesting and challenging problems. The implementation of today’s complex computing systems, networks and multimedia systems requires the skills of knowledgeable and versatile computer scientists. Computer networks and the internet are now central to the study of computing and information technology, presenting both technical and social challenges. Artificial intelligence (AI) — the study of intelligent behaviour — is having an increasing influence on computer system design.”

2. Dr Khan writes: “How do we understand, reason, plan, cooperate, converse, read and communicate? What are the roles of language and logic? What is the structure of the brain? How does vision work? These are all questions as fundamental as the sub-atomic structure of matter. These are also questions where the science of computing plays an important role in our attempts to provide answers. The computer scientist can expect to come face-to-face with problems of great depth and complexity and, together with scientists, engineers and experts in other fields, may help to solve them. Computing is not just about the big questions; it is also about engineering-making things work. Computing is unique in offering both the challenge of science and the satisfaction of engineering.”

Now compare this to the first paragraph of Imperial College London website (www3.imperial.ac.uk/engineering/teaching/exploringengineering/computing): “How do we understand, reason, plan, cooperate, converse, read and communicate? What are the roles of language and logic? What is the structure of the brain? How does vision work? These are questions as fundamental, in their own way, as questions about the sub-atomic structure of matter. They are also questions where the science of computing plays an important role in our attempts to provide answers. The computer scientist can expect to come face-to-face with problems of great depth and complexity and, together with scientists, engineers and experts in other fields, may help to disentangle them. But computing is not just about the big questions it is also about engineering-making things work. Computing is unique in offering both the challenge of a science and the satisfaction of engineering.”

3. Furthermore, Dr Khan writes: “Computer science is an inter-disciplinary subject. It is firmly rooted in engineering and mathematics, with links to linguistics, psychology and other fields. Computer science is concerned with constructing hardware and software systems, digital electronics, compiler design, programming languages, operation systems, networks and graphics. Theoretical computer science addresses fundamental issues: the motion of computable function, proving the correctness of hardware and software and the theory of communicating system.

Again the University of Cambridge website (www.cam.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/courses/compsci) contains the following text: (First paragraph) “Computer science is interdisciplinary. It is firmly rooted in engineering and mathematics, with links to linguistics, psychology and other fields. [...] (Second paragraph) Practical computer science is concerned with constructing hardware and software systems: digital electronics, compiler design, programming languages, operating systems, networks and graphics. Theoretical computer science addresses fundamental issues: the notion of computable function, proving the correctness of hardware and software, the theory of communicating systems.”

4. The second half of Dr Khan’s article (paragraph 7 onwards) can be found in ACM’s Computing Curricula 2009. Although he credits ACM but doesn’t clarify that he is directly copying sentences from a document. Also, in the beginning of his piece he does acknowledge one of his former colleagues, an Engineer Nasim Khan, for input for the article — however, it is not clear whether this input is the reason for the apparent plagiarism.

Fahad Rafique Dogar

PhD student, Carnegie Mellon University

Pittsburgh, PA, US

Here

I believe the correct terminology to be applied here is “LOL!”‘ followed by, “you got served, biatch!”

Also, who plagiarizes brochures? :S

Bogged down

Apologies for the shameless self-promotion:

But, in our attempt to actually change how Pakistan is viewed, just what exactly are we achieving – if anything? Musharraf’s ‘enlightened moderation’ brought about a multitude of criticism, primarily because it was viewed as unislamic. But it had a more relevant criticism that was rarely proffered; ‘enlightened moderation’ was superficial. It did not attempt to face, let alone solve, the many crises Pakistanis on a regular basis face. Now with Musharraf no longer in charge, none of those criticisms are voiced, but the superficial good ‘enlightened moderation’ managed to achieve is still existent.

And these availed opportunities are what we now present to the rest of the world as proof and evidence that Pakistan is growing – that it’s a place of hope and ambition, of love and peace, of independence and equality. Facebook is pummeled with pictures of Northern Pakistan, showing our beautiful mountain ranges and the calm, stoic beauty of Lake Saif-ul-Muluk. These pictures beckon everyone to realize that Pakistan exists beyond bomb blasts and honour killings, beyond corruption and institutional thievery. But what relevance does the beauty of Pakistan have? Every country on earth is beautiful. Mountains, lakes and plains cannot speak for people, and it sure as hell cannot compensate for their acts.

We try and show the world that we drink and party, that we have bands who regularly play live (or at least used to). We show them our burgeoning fashion scene, and the increasing importance assigned to literature. We show them that Pakistan is moving beyond feudalism and moving towards an assertion of our independence (sexual and social). We show them young upstart politicians and business people. But how much of this is happening for the common man, and not for our elites?

Less than 5% of Pakistanis earn more than 25,000 rupees a month, according to a survey by the International Republican Institute. This is, for two reasons, an astonishing statistic. First, because of the sheer percentage of people who are able to earn more than 25k, and second the fact that it’s 25k – a truly paltry sum. It brings into context the poverty that exists in Pakistan, when 5% of Pakistanis can lay claim to earning this amount. How many, then, earn more? The gap here, between the middle class and our elites is almost as substantial. But nothing we do at this moment in time affects this statistic, or indeed poverty. Lavish, colorful get-togethers and an active music scene don’t really affect our economy enough to pull more people from under the poverty line. Neither do more boutiques opening up on M.M Alam Road.

Pakistan is not a state at ease. Christians and other minorities often find themselves at the wrong end of the stick. Women are, as I’ve stressed many times already, repressed violently. Equality is a word that doesn’t seem to exist in this country, but corruption seems to one that’s everywhere. Every time we try and tell someone this isn’t the case, and that our snow-laden mountains and country clubs are evidence of a better Pakistan not heard about in mainstream Western media circles, we do ourselves an immense disservice. We do the people of Pakistan a great disservice, because we slide their grievances aside. It’s about time we stop doing that, so that we’re able to fashion a Pakistan where if someone opines that we’re a society built on inequality and oppression, we can show them actual evidence of how that is not the case. So that when we try and explain that Pakistan isn’t a hellhole, we can do so with a straight face.

From here.

I bring this up because I keep seeing attempts on the part of nearly everyone to continously avoid the bigger problems we face. Rauf Klasra’s ‘investigative’ pieces on Musharraf and Shaukat Aziz taking home millions of gifts presented while they were in office is another of these little issues we mire ourselves in. Yes, they were undervalued. Yes, neither of them had a right to any of them. But if Shaukat Aziz/Musharraf take home an antique vase, a rolex or an expensive briefcase, how exactly does that affect your common Pakistani working in a paddy? How exactly does it affect the incoming President and Prime Minister either?

It doesn’t. All it does is offer the public a chance to spew some extra vitriol at those two figures, because God knows they’re somehow still relevant. So we feign surprise at the fact that our these two were corrupt. Except, aren’t the people in charge of us right now equally corrupt? But there’ll be no investigative journalism dicking on Zardari. Or any of the countless MNAs and MPAs. And even if there was, the outcome would be zilch. Nada. Nothing.

My point being, Pakistan has institutional problems. Just because we’re able to oust Farah Dogar’s designs on getting into a medical college on the basis of her father being the CJ doesn’t mean everyone else in Pakistan is going to stop doing the exact same fucking thing. Just because we’re able to show that Musharraf and Shaukat Aziz ’stole’, doesn’t mean every other Pakistan won’t fucking steal either!

Why we get stuck arguing over and getting angry over these pathetic little fucking things when the issues and problems that plague us are far more substantial, I have no idea. Maybe it’s our way of looking past the bigger issues – our way of ignoring things. If that is the case, then we’ve been doing it since forever and have gotten particularly good at it too!

songs for a dead pilot

I’ve finally done something I’ve been meaning to do for a while – something to an extent unnecessary. Cue The Strings is where all my creative writing-ish pieces (prose/poetry/short stories) are going to be from now on. No more of that on this blog.

Why? I don’t have a legitimate reason to be honest, it just seemed right. Or maybe it’s a bit off when you try to throw up a poem after you’ve embedded a video that takes the piss out of women drivers? Either way, that’s that. Hopefully I can populate the other blog fairly quickly.

In other news, sorry about the theme change. The last one was getting to me and I’d like more ’space’ per se. The compartmentalized text boxes in themes are getting to me (though I’m stuck with them on the other blog!).

:(

Well. That hurt.

Congratulations Barca. Easily the best team in Europe, having pretty much schooled the second best team. Congrats on the treble too, it’s a brilliant achievement. :sadthumbup: