IT or a time to get LIT?

hullo shakir

were it possible to do through the net, id kinda salute you...i have been trying to get my passport which has expired fixed since the last one week...inspite of my dads insistence that i give it to him to get in order, i refused....`sahee channels sae karoongee`...yetserday when the lecher manhoos aadmee behind the counter asked me to get the 25th thousand thing verifed (irrelevent things like my inter certificate...that my brothers exist..that i was born in pakistan..ALL of which had previously been proven) i didnt threaten to have his ass hauled but did the next bad thing..i dropped my passport off to my dad...within a days time i had a bright new spanking passport in my hands..and to think i need the passport to travel to a youth forum to REPRESENT pakistan..i almost cried of sheer frustration in the whole process..the men there just sat behind the desks and smoked and joked..it was as though we in the lines were just not there...i literally had to stop myself from screaming and throttling those men..can u imagine how it is for the man who cannot afford the fees or doesnt have the connections? im not surprised people turn to terrorism in the process...note that you will not have a connected man killing people..it will always be someone who has no money, no connections...the system just sukks so bad

good luck in whatever you do shakir

best,

anNy

…shakir, bureaucracy and red tape and that too in a third-world country would be enough to drive anyone insane….but it must feel great to accomplish smt under these circumstances….keep it up…we need more ppl like you here…

Reply #: 36 shakir69

[recently when dr. eqbal ahmed passed away there was more of a response to the man and his writings abroad than in Pakistan. The average Pakistani doesnt even know who eqbal ahmad was.]

Eqbal Ahmad is as respected (and relavant) to an average Pakistani as his friend Naom Chomsky is to an average American. Chmosky is not even on the fringes of American political discourse, although he is well known abroad. I admire the average Pakistani for rejecting Eqbal Ahmad and his political ideology.

shakir69 #36 You are right about eqbal ahmed. I learnt of the house he lived in in Islamabad after he died: this was a house I had passed by many times without knowing it while he was living. On IT: What stops an IT outfit in Pakistan from competing for contracts in the global market place? They say the Indian IT industry grew because the government bureacrats did not understand the business and so (thankfully) could not figure out how to interfere. The same is true in Pakistan. While I dont thing the government can do much to build up this industry other staying out of the way (including getting out of the telecomm business but providing the necessary regulatory functions). The rest is up to people like you to make sure you make commitments you can meet, ensure repeat customers, and thus buildup a global reputation. Simply losing one contract (SBP) should mean nothing one way or another.

Sun shifts core Java unit from US to Bangalore



BANGALORE: Sun Microsystems, the global computing giant, has set the spotlight on its India engineering centre in Bangalore.

In a significant development, the $10-billion tech major has moved its Java tools and libraries division, a high-end engineering division which offers the technology platform to millions of Java developers across globe to build applications, from its Palo Alto technology centre to Bangalore.

Sun decided to shift the core work to Bangalore due to three key factors: to optimally use the engineering skill-sets available here, to beat the slowdown and to stay closer to the market. In India alone, over 1.6 lakh engineers are engaged in developing Java-based applications.

Leveraging the brand strength of India Inc. seems to be a new trend among the global tech companies. It may recalled that i2 Technologies has recently announced to relocate around 150 engineers from its US office to Bangalore.

One year back, Cisco, No. 1 networking company, moved a bunch of its engineers from its US office centre to Bangalore when it started its India development centre.

i2 The prime objectives of this development are to optimally utilise technology talents of the Indian engineers and reinforce the importance of the India engineering centre.

To steer the activity here, around six top notch engineers of Indian origin working in the same division in USA have opted to work at the Bangalore centre.

Speaking to The times of India, Dale E. Ferrario, director of product engineering, Java software in Sun Microsystems, said: ``The Java core tools and libraries are the ones which every programmer will depend on to build applications. It is a core piece of work that every application needs.``

Simply put, while Java tools are the compilers that help in packaging applications, libraries include three main areas: Java.io (input and output), Java.util (utilities) and Java.lang (language).

Out of its total workforce of around 400 engineers in the centre here, over 55 technocrats are engaged in defining and creating Java platform in areas like Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE), Java Standard Edition (J2SE) for desktops, Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) for mobile platform. The other developers doing work for Sun One, network storage, Solaris, Star Office eventually build applications on these platforms.

Sun India on J2ME

In a key development, Sun India engineering centre has engaged a dedicated team of 10 engineers to develop the J2ME platform, which will deliver the Java-based location-specific wireless technologies to the device makers. The team works in collaboration with developers based in Sun`s engineering centres in Sweden and Israel.

According to Dale Ferrario, director of product engineering (Java Software), the shipment of J2ME-enabled handsets is just 18 months away. The market for these products is estimated to touch $1.6 billion by 2006.

The competing standards in this space include IBM`s Brew and Microsoft`s Stinger

taahmad - salam was not the only one in pakistan. recently when dr. eqbal ahmed passed away there was more of a response to the man and his writings abroad than in Pakistan. The average Pakistani doesnt even know who eqbal ahmad was. quite sad. my problem isnt with the ``ghar ki mrghi daal barabar`` issue, it`s with the fact that so much lip service is paid to ``IT`` like it`s some sort of magic mantra, when there are few real changes on the ground.

shakir #69 A bit off the subject, but yesterday some private letters in the 1950`s between Neils Bohr and Heisenberg (Hitler`s head of the Nazi atomic bomb project) were made public for the first time. In one of these, our own (although disowned by the mullahs) Abdus Salam is mentioned (in letter from Heisenber to Bohr): ``By the way, I have since had yet a special pleasure: the relative parity of the Sigma and Lambda particles, about which I disagreed with Salam and others in Aix en Provence and Brussels, has in the meantime been measured in California, and it turns out to be odd, just as it came out in Dürr’s and my calculations. Thus, we now begin to understand the complicated spectrum of elementary particles.``

So, clearly Salam was very much among the leading scientists of the world even back in the 1950`s (even though his name is mentioned here only in disagreement). The manner in which he was treated in Pakistan was shameful. It is time we stopped treating ``ghar ki murghi, dal barabar`` and gave talent - in IT or basic sciences or anything else - the respect it deserves.

Ref Layman #: 33

[shankar #31:

``{{Shankar is a South Indian all right. He may have lived in Bombay but is a Tamilian.}}

``Actually I`m a Saraswat Brahmin. My mother-tongue is konkani. It is such a small community that even most Indians arent aware of our existence:)``

Oops! Apologies Shankar, Romair.]

No need to apologize. From his self-hatred, you diagnosed him to be a TamBrahm.

shankar #31:

``{{Shankar is a South Indian all right. He may have lived in Bombay but is a Tamilian.}}

``Actually I`m a Saraswat Brahmin. My mother-tongue is konkani. It is such a small community that even most Indians arent aware of our existence:)``

Oops! Apologies Shankar, Romair.

The community is not that small. I have come across a few amchigeles myself :-)

ref ali1 - ali my company never bid for the SBP contract. i was merely using it to highlight how the government doesnt seem to have much confidence in the pakistani software sector. confidence is measured in dollars not press releases.

shakir

Layman,

{{Shankar is a South Indian all right. He may have lived in Bombay but is a Tamilian.}}

Actually I`m a Saraswat Brahmin. My mother-tongue is konkani. It is such a small community that even most Indians arent aware of our existence:)

Acc to my grandparents, our ancestors migrated from Kashmir to the Konkan area--mainly around Mangalore & Goa. Then, in order to escape conversions by the Portugese, they fled to Bombay & a few to Bangalore. My great-grandparents onwards were all Bombayites. Our ancestral temples are in Kashmir & Goa.

Some well known ``aamchis`` (thats what we call our folks) are Shyam Benegal, Guru Dutt, Prakash Padukone & Girish Karnad...

{{On Sindhis in Bombay, anyone remember products with the tag ``Made by USA``? These did well till someone discovered that USA stood for Ulhasnagar Sindhi Association!}}

Yes, that was famous in Bombay:) Most Sindhi refugees from Pakistan settled in Ulhasnagar & Kalyan (suburbs of Bombay). Hey..talk about Sindhi ingenuity..gotta hand it to them.. they can sell a freezer to an Eskimo:)

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The author`s complaint is not peculiar to Pakistan. In India, Maruti Udyog uses Oracle`s ERP system and Bajaj uses SAP. Goes to show how much reliance all these guys place on Indian software engineers. There hasn`t been any software package to come out of India. It is all code coolies working for daily wages in far away places and congregating in desi ghettoes like NJ or Sunnyvale, CA.

As a friend in the business put it, ``A hundred years ago, I would have been sitting on my haunches smoking a beedi in some village trying to recruit laborers to go to Malaya for tapping rubber trees, to Fiji for cutting sugarcane or to Ceylon for plucking tea leaves. Today I sit in an airconditioned ffice and recruit people to go to Canada, USA, UK, Germany or Australia. The difference is in degree not in substance.``

Romair,

Shankar is a South Indian all right. He may have lived in Bombay but is a Tamilian.

On Sindhis in Bombay, anyone remember products with the tag ``Made by USA``? These did well till someone discovered that USA stood for Ulhasnagar Sindhi Association!

Re Rdesikan

{{and what are the leaders of Mckinsey, United, or the Hartford companies. Chopped liver or Indians?}}

considering their immigrant status and the small % of the US population they make-up, Indians have no match for corporate leadership success...in McKinsey, aside from the CEO, a disproportionate number of other Partners are Indian...these are not entry-level drones, but senior Partners of the firm...the place is full of Jews and Indians...although to a lesser extent, this is true for every leading management consulting firm and investment bank...

and i need not rattle off a list of indian leaders in industry...

You lost a bid at SBP... big deal.

Next time, know the decision maker in advance and send him a suitcase of Jinnah`s pictures... the ones printed on the Rs. 1000 bills, and you`ll be ok.