SOFTEC 2004 Btw, as far as quality is concerned, well FAST students has been winning competition all over Pakistan even last year. Infact the very group that got first prize has been in the same slot for the previous 3 competitions. And yeah they didnot win in A.Q.Khan, but again FAST won there too, and as far as GIKI is concerned i guess they didnt participate in that competition. And btw, if u know. all FAST projects that have won competitions, are research projects!

So you can see its not all abt the point proving tht FAST is the best!!! they have been winning every where!!! but i guess the attitude towards other areas of research should also be encouraged!

PS: by the way .... correction in my previous reply...we participated in SOFTEC 2003 [second line] :)

SOFTEC 2004 Being one of those groups who had a R&D project ``Project Rhapsody-An intiative in Artifical Creativity`` in SOFTEC 2004 finished among top 5 and was not considered deserving for the top 3 spots and infact the project won prizes in all other competitions it was presented in, infact ``Best Overall Software`` at A.Q. Khan, which was the only way we could have answered how flawed SOFTECs judging system is, which was the very reason we didnt submit our second version this time around.

I guess the major point here is the new found love of FAST for Urdu Development. I believe there is a certain group in decision making which considers only Urdu Projects as valid research projects as Professors are involved in their research, where as research effort carried out by indepedent group of students is considered with a non-serious attitude. Infact certain judges were bent upon proving that our efforts were not even concrete because we havent studied books regarding Creativity, and also Music has no valid output [thus proving how blocked their minds that they view Creativity as fixed input and fixed output].

I think its abt time that, yes, Urdu Research is important as a National cause since major portion of our population are literate in Urdu, but we should also encourage to venture into new areas of research bacause if we want to excel globally in IT , the research has got to come from from the best universites here. We are always forced to follow the trends and technology introduced by others leaving us only improving their processes. The thinking has got to change and such competitions must start encouraging innovative and novel ideas because this will bring depth to computer science in Pakistan, which for me, right now is only focused on software development [which also explains the fall out due to 9/11].