Author: ReallyVirtual

LESCO Please Give Me My Life Back

ReallyVirtual2 Comments

Dear LESCO,

You knew about the (then) impending power crisis of 2007 way back in 2004 and I was glad you didn’t do a thing about it, besides blaming rains, coal shortages and the crumbling infrastructure in the four years that followed. Not many people see the wisdom in that , but I am not one of those people. I realize very clearly that the 5 hours without power daily were just the training we Pakistani needed to evolve to a higher level – a person who can survive without electricity and gas for that much time can do pretty much anything, and feel superior when his (weak) American friends ask “How can you live like that?!” in awe and inspiration. Those load-shedding spells were just the thing I needed to learn get my work done in the 4 hours of continuous internet that you gave me, thereby increasing my productivity, and giving me the time to read a few hundred pages of a book daily by laptop-light, thereby increasing my quality of life. The one hour discharge and recharges increased my laptop’s battery life by 50%, and forced my RSI-prone wrists to get the much-needed rest that I would have ignored otherwise. We didn’t really need running steel mills either, all they give us is global warming and pollution, so I was happy when they were shut down. Your tag-teaming with the Gas company also allowed me to eat out every other day due to lack of any other options. Life was wonderful, I was constantly looking at the bright side of life in the daily darkness spells, and had become a fan of your greater wisdom.

Why, then, did you have to promise an end to load shedding by February 2008, and actually deliver on that promise?! I have been waiting for a power outage for two days straight now, please give me back my 5 hours of load-shedding per day. I miss them. 🙁

Election Commission of Pakistan “Hacker Free” Website

ReallyVirtual2 Comments

flag(Sorry about the waving flag, couldn't resist the temptation). With nothing better to do, I just visited the Election Commission of Pakistan Election Results website (yes, that's the sequel (no pun intended) to the ecp.gov.pk state-of-the-art live voter database website that I wrote about here , the one that can't find me, thereby making me a dead voter)… and was refreshing the results page every couple of minutes, when I finally managed to come across the crash that my brother had mentioned a few minutes earlier. He had also mentioned that the site is extremely slow (he is sitting in Cambridge right now) but since our mehndi.com CEO promised us servers and bandwidth not found anywhere else on the planet, so I'm pretty sure it must be the UK ISPs that are too slow for the site.

Anyway, I digress… so here are the screenshots for your forehead slapping pleasure:

It seems that an Index was out of range… take a closer look… yep, the site is still running in debug mode, and the path to the files on the server are visible. ecp-dotnet-crash

And here's another screen-shot, a 'Parser Error' this time… Oops!

ecp-dotnet-crash2

The vsite in the url probably means they have multiple applications hosted on virtual servers. If you compare the Election Results website with this asp.net website, you will probably come to the conclusion that the talented developers (read interns @ 10,000 per month or less) weren't exactly familiar with either web design or the way ASP.NET membership/roles framework works, but were rescued by Google and were able to "borrow" and copy/paste from the example to save the day.

I wouldn't be too surprised if there are a half dozen SQL injection possibilities in there, or if the website has an /admin/ folder somewhere in the URL schema (as an 'admin' section is found in 90% of websites developed by our Pakistani programmers), or if there is some left-over code from the examples that will allow anyone to register and mess with the website.

10 years ago, one message on any Pakistani IRC channel would have been enough to take this website down, but at this point in time, I can only pray that the website stays online for the next couple of days so that the mehndi.com guys get their 10 hours of crash-free fame (I think they've already had their fortune delivered to them in Canada). I also hope that they find and fix the flaws before the site gets hit by hackers, and only because I don't want the rest of the world to have one more chance to laugh at us, we can do that job ourselves.

PTCL Triple Play Project

ReallyVirtual13 Comments

LESCO, teamed with my local ISP (who gives bandwidth on LAN, and therefore, dies with every one hour power failure) finally made me bite the bullet and move to the PTCL Triple Play Project aka Broadband Pakistan today. The PTCL techs just left after installing the connection (in 10 minutes) and the speed tests so far are not bad at all.

PTCL speed

Contrary to my expectations, I have had a very smooth customer service experience till now. One of the few good things about Broadband Pakistan is that you can get it upgraded and downgraded for free with one phone call, and you will be charged according to your usage. They didn't give me a wifi modem though (they save them for the 1Mbps lines, discriminating 8@$tards!), but told me to call their office after 4-5 days and they will change the modem (I hope they are true to their words). Now I just need to test the one dozen UPSes lying around to find a working one and I'll be a bit less dependent on LESCO.

Musharraf Can Joke (New Business Opportunities)

ReallyVirtual

shirtWho says our President Musharraf can't joke? Here's the latest news from GEO:

PARIS: President Pervez Musharraf Tuesday invited French businessmen to invest in Pakistan without any fears, saying circumstances are conducive for investment in the country. Addressing business executives at a hotel after reaching here in the second leg of his visit, President Musharraf assured safety to the foreign investment and pointed out that the terrorists have never hit business entrepreneurs in the country …

So, can you spot the cruel joke in there? Though the word 'Frenchman' itself is an oxymoronic joke to some, the one I am referring to is how our President (who seems to lack sincere advisers these days) actually used the F word ('fear', you effin eff!) in a room full of French business people! Of all the places in the world, he had to do it in France!

Didn't anyone tell him about what French people are famous for?! On second though, maybe he was just trying to help the French by giving them a chance to work in the most dangerous country in the world, or maybe his speech was written by an american master with a sense of humor. I wish I were there to see it happen (please point me to a recording if one exists please).

(When a country's president has to point out that 'look! our terrorists don't kill entrepreneurs!", that is another huge sick joke, but we aren't supposed to notice that.)

In the last couple of weeks, two potential client firms from Europe that we were negotiating with, politely 'postponed' their decision to start their outsourcing centers in Lahore after hearing about the blast at the GPO. So let us make some lemonade… forget 'Destination Pakistan', there must be a huge untapped market in T-shirts and other memorabilia around the '… most dangerous…' phenomenon – and pretty soon, it may be the only viable business option left for us, so let us start practicing. Let us ask our terrorist brothers to keep blowing people up, while you and I can start selling stuff. Here's one I just made [cafepress.com], wear it with pride!

Bobby Fischer Died Today

ReallyVirtual

dead-kingChess is like life – Boris Spassky

Chess is life – Bobby Fischer

Bobby Fischer, the renegade, recluse Da Vinci look-alike chess genius died today in Iceland at the (ironic) age of 64 today.

I have been following (and fascinated by) his life ever since I read his book “Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess” in the early 90s (and ‘forgot’ to return it to the friend I borrowed it from). His books, his openings, and the dozens of chess puzzles that resulted from his famous matches taught me a lot about the game.

He was a rebel and romantic; a proponent of the 9/11 attacks, in another life, he might have been a suicide bomber, or a cyber punk. Though he has been labeled ‘eccentric’ numerous times, but he was also brutally honest (read this rare interview to see what I mean). Thank you Bobby, for teaching us chess, and for being honest.