A Leak About WikiLeaks!

When i came to know about this book, it made its way to my must reads! It is always fascinating to read about the details behind big projects and getting to know how things were being done behind the scenes.

Before reading this book i knew nothing about what actually was WikiLeaks (WL) and the ideology behind it. All i knew was the leaks regarding Pakistan and America! But actually this book not only gives an insight about WL but also about the world and the frauds going on.

What is WikiLeaks and how it functions:

Basically its a website that is driven by many volunteers who contribute through the system provided by WL to submit secret documents and donate money as well. WL is a non-profit organization. And they have it hosted at different location through out the world.

The ideology behind WL:

Apparently the underlying ideology is that all functions of governments and its organizations should be transparent and should be brought in knowledge of the people. Its a fight against censorship and a fight to bring true facts in the limelight both.

Audience who might like to read it:

It is a good book to read for all the people lives stuck in IT. Its interesting how the writer takes the reader through his journey at the WL, the book is like a real fiction!. At some places one feels that Julian Assange has been too much criticized and at others you feel that maybe the writer was a bit too much involved and impressed from the guy and had a lot of expectations. He sure was impressed which can be seen in the starting of the book where he explains Julian as someone he was really impressed from his personality and airs. Julian was formerly a hacker known as "Mendax" in the hacker community.

Wikileaks, as reported by this book, is a web application that started its functioning with very little resources and they kept pretending in front of the world that they have a fleet of lawyers and enormous resources and that it was hard to challenge them!

Some notable info from the book:

Some interesting information that i got from this book was about Scientology and its founder L. Ron Hubbard who tells people that he is millions of years old and has been travelling from planet to planet to see if everything is OK.The author says that at first people would laugh at him but later on with the magic of his speech he would actually convince the people.

Its also worth a read that how they collaborated their leaks with their sources how they ensured the safety and anonymity of their source and how they collaborated with the media and journalists.

the story of the video called "collateral murder" is captivating and its amazing how they got all the things done, and one thing is for sure that there are a lot of bloopers behind every project but the bloopers behind their project could cost much and they knew this!

One thing that might be out of context but worth mentioning is that Iceland is a country which looks like a  photographic negative!

Attitude takes you places:

Recently from BBC site got to read this news update:

24 Oct 2011 – The whistle-blowing group Wikileaks says it is suspending its publication of classified files due to financial problems.

One nothing noted from Daniel's account of Julian is that the only hurdle that might prevent him from reaching the top could be his attitude, he somehow lacks the guts to work in a team (though he already is an achiever but could go higher).This news update confirmed my views. By the ways the Daniel suggests that Julian didn't like when others were called the co-founders of WL as he himself wanted to be the only "founder" furthermore he fantasized being arrested!

OpenLeaks:

The author has promised at the end of the book about another whistle blower site that has been registered as "OpenLeaks" upon the same foundations and with the same aims as WL.

Last thing that I learned from this book is that WL tries to expose the cruel world we live in!

What Pakistan can learn from China

Image Source

The motivation to write this post comes from the book I have read pretty recently called “Chaltay hou to Cheen ko chaliyay” a travelogue by: Ibn-e-Insha In this book he narrates the story of his visit to China as a part of cultural delegation from the government.

China has come a long way, and has struggled a lot to come to the place where it is today. Its an economic power which is expected to help in euro-zone crisis, though the countries are afraid that China might take over their market but as an editorial in a paper read "Beggars are not choosers" hence they have no other option but to seek help from China.

Though there is no comparison between China and Pakistan due to the fact that they are a lot maturer than us as a nation because Pakistan was formed in 1947 and the Long march in China dates back to 1949. This means that almost when Pakistan was formed there was a revolution in China. This fact makes China much more mature as a state and nation.

If we briefly go through the history of the land now called Pakistan, the people have been ruled by invaders sometimes the Aryans sometimes the British. In other words we have always been waiting for someone to come from outside and rule the region! And we can see the glimpses of foreign rule even today!

Fundamental Difference between China and Pakistan, which I have felt while reading the book, is that China’s cultural norms and traditions are aligned with their national goal and this has been a key factor in their success, whereas here in Pakistan we follow the trends and traditions of India, dressing is inspired from the west and our deeds are not accordance with our religion but our nationality is ‘Pakistani’! I feel we are in a state of confusion! This confusion can be overcome by strong leadership which provokes nationalism in the people and earn their commitment and dedication. Unfortunately we don’t lack but are somehow devoid of a strong leadership.

In China, as told by the author, dressing is decent and simple, and everyone seems to be dedicated to his/her work/study/profession. Whereas what we can notice in our country is that universities are becoming fashion houses! And such dedication cannot be seen in everyone but few.

He further says that there were thousands of doctors in China who had left luxurious life in America and Europe and came back to their country to serve their own people. Moreover writers, Doctors and intellectuals have to spend two months per year in villages. I wonder what would be the reaction if such a condition is imposed in our country and I further wonder if any such thing would ever be implemented even if imposed by law!

Health standards are very high in China which is a result of healthy habits in which drinking hot water is top of the list and continues with healthy food.

Though China has a leader behind the revolution but the prosperity has been taken forward by the people at the grass roots and their commitment and dedication, which continued even after mao tsi tung. A leader can only give a vision which needs the power of the people (willing people) to implement the vision. If this vision is empowered by ‘public will’ then the results would be pretty similar to China!

Caricaturing the Sacrifice

        Each year on Eid-ulAzha we sacrifice our dignity, sense and respect by making fun of the sacrifice by all means. From adverts to dramas the sacrificial animal is used to sell the channel. And that is what we are teaching the next generation about this event.

Today I got this message from Ufone:

       

 “Win a blackberry Bold 9000! Just MMS funny videos of your sacrificial animals to ….”

This was enough to make me write this blog post!

       And I am pretty sure that the Eid transmission of various channels would be full of people mimicking the sounds of animals and making fun of the sacrifice by all possible means, and frankly to me (I need to use some harsh words here) these programs stink. Sacrifice has become a matter of fun, a  matter of competition and show off, which is against the very spirit of sacrifice.

        Humor is something very positive and constructive as i have stated in another post earlier,  but there has to be a line that divides the things we need to make fun of and things we don’t make fun of. Airing all such programs dramas and adverts even , do we have any right to protest against Islam being caricatured by other religions? No! we don’t, we first need to set our rules and vision right.

          Hazrat Ibrahi A.S. was a Prophet of very high stature, the Quran uses the word 'Hanif' for him, i.e. focused & committed and his commitment was nothing but oneness of God. He spent his life in trials and tribulations but he never let go of his cause. He was the ambassador of oneness of Allah for the ancient man. Even he did not give up in front of a powerful ruler Namrud, which for he was sentenced to be thrown into fire, but that fire could not bear the fire of tauheed(oneness of God) in Hazrat Ibrahim A.S. and turned to flowers.

Reminds me of some urdu poetry:

Be-Khatar Kood Para Aatish-e-Namrood Mein Ishq
Aqal Hai Mehv-e-Tamasha-e-Lab-e-Baam Abhi

Translation:

Love fearlessly jumped into the fire of Namrud
Intellect is absorbed in the spectacle from roof‐top still

The sunnah of such a Nabi of such high stature must never be made fun of.

We need to bring the true essence to the lime light, make the people realize the sunnah better and enhance the knowledge of the new generation on this rather than laughing at the idea and hence let the world laugh at us!

 May there be 'sacrifice' in every ‘slaughter’!! Ameen.

Developers VS. Engineers

My perception is that a developer’s job starts where an engineer’s job ends. Though an engineer’s job does not end literally, but when design is in a shape suitable to be handed over to the developer can be termed as ‘end’.

Accepting the fact that a developer is not just a code writer or a syntax specialist, he would also review and modify the design, so the jobs of both overlap but are clearly different. Just like the jobs of a technical and creative writer are totally different but of course both have to ‘write’.

A designer has the eye to see through a design whether it is easily modifiable or not. For example when implementing user roles the designers concern would be what if a new role has to be added later on? Does the design allow this change easily or not? What if a role has to be removed? Whether all the roles present in the real time domain should go into the software system at all? An architect’s concern would be how to manage the interaction of modules and layers and which architecture to follow reviewing the trade offs related to speed, modifiability, etc.

So if my perception is correct and ‘design & architecture’ is different from ‘development’ then should developers call themselves engineers, when they are not fulfilling the role of an engineer? I would not prefer to call a job an engineering one unless it is related to whole lot of design decisions, architectural decisions and their documentation and modeling. Starting off from the domain model, use case model, vision document ending up somewhere around class diagram and partially final architecture diagrams. An architect may or may not take part in coding.

I remember when I started my internship I was given an individual project to start with and was expected to come up with the database design first up, and I was a kind of shocked that how am I supposed to jump unto database design before having gone through the ‘analysis’ phase, or without design documentation. However I fast forwarded through the design diagrams for my own understanding. But this was actually how work is done practically, and I find there is a gap in how things are being done in education and industry.

Later on came to know the same from other friends who were working at software houses that things are not done practically as we are taught in university. Most people think that they don’t have this much time, where as in books we have read that time spent on design and architecture is the most beneficial. Many people believe that documenting or not documenting design is not a concern on professional level, as both ways bugs are produced!

My question here is that all that we learned throughout our degree, and all that we drew so much, are they just fairy tales? Or can they really be implemented in real time settings and larger scope projects? Are these methodologies (RUP, Agile, XP) actually followed or is it possible to completely follow them? most importantly: Does the industry differ between a developer and an Engineer? (If the answer is yes, then why are universities offering two lines i.e. computer science and software engineering?)or do they (the companies) just need 'code writers'?

Time Value of Greeting Cards

Once in financial accounting class I was surprised to know about the 'time value' of money, i really disliked the concept that 'money' is already given lot of value and its value should not be incremented with time, however those were hard facts of material world! same is the case with greeting cards their value increases exponentially with time, This fact was disclosed unto me once i came across a bunch of cards in my possession!