Blog about the Net, Pakistan and more

General

It is still February, yet even in the evening, the cooling fans have come on and I'm down to a single t-shirt. During the day, it feels as hot as summer which officially is still almost half a year away so the actual hot season may be the hottest I've ever seen. We've even started thinking about the air conditioners we should add in the new office.

If I look at what has changed since last year, the main thing I notice is more roads and less trees. Maybe that is a contributing factor. Global warming maybe? Whatever the cause may be, the extreme heat, combined with all the power shortages which are bound to return at the most inopportune time, will make this summer a scorching and unbearable one. Be warned.

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Posted at 21:15pm PKT  Comments(1) | ¶

Internet Pakistan

As of this morning, YouTube is opening fine on the different connections that I have tried. The ban has been lifted and the offending video(s) have presumably been removed (looks like they could have just asked YouTube to remove the objectionable content).

Whatever the motives of the ban were or what long-term effects it will have on Pakistan, at least this incident showed how vulnerable the Internet is and how even a clueless engineer (I'm sure it wasn't intentional) in somewhere like Pakistan can bring down a website as big and global as YouTube.

This article (thanks Stuart) explains what happened when the PTCL/PIE guys attempted to block access to YouTube for Pakistan, but ended up blocking it for everyone else.

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Posted at 01:09am PKT  Comments | ¶

Internet Pakistan

You read it correctly. YouTube has been deemed unsuitable for 160 million people by some morons who haven't a clue as to what the Internet is or how it functions. It's hard to believe that there are people who can come up with such backward ideas and yet wield such power and authority that they can govern what we need and what we don't.

There is so much dirt out there that attempting to block any of it is akin to putting up a banner announcing its presence. Why do this if it will only attract more publicity and spread the message farther? Sometimes I get the feeling that these monkeys do this kind of thing deliberately. Either they want to spread the very filth they are claiming to censor or they're covering up something that would expose their own incompetence or that of their masters (like the vote rigging videos some people have mentioned).

In the words of a fellow blogger, maybe these guys consider our brains to be so puny that we are unable to decide between right and wrong. Their faith may be so fragile that it can be shattered by something as simple as a cartoon or a few-minute video clip, but it doesn't give them the right to block everything like this.

With broadband Internet spreading really fast in Pakistan, sites such as YouTube were proving to be very popular and useful for us Pakistanis. They provide an outlet for creativity while being a great source of entertainment and information. What exactly is this ban meant to do? Stifle all the wonderful work that we have lately been producing?

The whole design and concept of the Internet is such that attempting to restrict access to specific content is quite futile. Because of a single offending video, they blocked the whole YouTube site. What next? Wikipedia? Search engines? Might as well block the whole Internet while they're at it.

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Posted at 11:05am PKT  Comments(18) | ¶

Linux Humor

Before reading this excellent piece, I didn't realize how endangered my species is becoming. The first few sentences sum it all up and nicely describe the peril that our dwindling numbers face:

There is a sad truth to the world today. I am part of a dying breed of people known as "shell users." ...... We use ssh, scp, and even occassionally ftp... , our kind is facing extinction.

Come to think of it, I have lately been active on a couple of webmaster forums, and though a positive sign is that a vast number of people are running their sites on Linux, it is alarming that only a handful of them know the difference between a Bourne shell and a bomb shell.

For us shell people, it would be blasphemous to run a server without knowing the MTA it is running. Yet these kids today can clear their email queue with a simple click, without ever bothering to know what they just did. No wonder spammers and viruses are spreading so fast. Just think what would happen when we shell people have disappeared.

So, if you are a woman between the ages of 23 and 43 who is ready to raise a child in the way of the shell, let me know so we can begin the process.

Don't let us die. Help us and you'll receive a 30 percent discount on all shell services we offer, and that includes setting up virus and spam protection.

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Posted at 22:16pm PKT  Comments(4) | ¶

Pakistan General

I have never voted before. This is mainly due to never being around in my home country of Pakistan during election time. Have never even seen a ballot paper before. This time around though, I have a chance to see what the fuss is all about. On the 18th February, when Pakistanis go to the polls, I'll play my part and cast my vote.

The problem is, there's nobody running that I want to vote for and the lesser of the running evils is still pretty evil. Musharraf would definitely have gotten my vote if he was running, though I'd be one of the very few voting for him.

So rather than stay home and leave it up for abuse (that's what a lot of people say will happen to it if I don't vote), I'm going to vote for Barack Obama. The vote may not count, but at least I'll be satisfied.

Why Obama? Well firstly, the next person in the White House will have more of an impact on our lives (hopefully a more positive one) than whoever is elected from within Pakistan. Secondly, he doesn't belong to any one of the major ethnic or religious groups of the country, thus will be less likely to favor his "own" family, tribe, caste or whatever (the same can't be said for the rest of the candidates).

Lastly, he seems like an intelligent and capable person who genuinely wants to do what's right (his speeches somehow remind me of a fictional cyborg policeman I used to love watching as a kid).

Go Obama!

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Posted at 13:35pm PKT  Comments(3) | ¶

Internet

Amazingly, a fifth breakdown in the Middle East's Internet connectivity has occurred within the span of just a week. This is far from a simple coincidence and can only mean that something big is going on.

It all started with the two undersea cable cuts on Wednesday, last week, and this was followed by a series of cuts, stretching from the Mediterranean, all the way to Malaysia. Though we in Pakistan hardly felt any of the effects, a number of Middle Eastern countries suffered as much as 70% loss in connectivity.

There's more info on this, as well as the above map, here, while this article, posted on TGP, attempts to "connect the dots". Very interesting read.

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Posted at 12:14pm PKT  Comments(9) | ¶

Internet Pakistan

It was about 2 and a half years ago that Pakistan's only major link to the rest of the world, the SMW3 cable, was cut just off of Pakistan's coast. We suffered cripplingly slow Internet connectivity for over 2 weeks and it was a major setback to the growing call center market and the young hi-tech industry of the country.

This time around, there were multiple cuts on both the SEA-ME-WE-4 (South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4) and FLAG circuits, somewhere off the coast of Egypt. This time, the damage was on an even bigger scale and left millions in the Middle East without Internet access while also causing disruption in India and Pakistan. It is estimated that it'll take weeks to fully restore the circuit.

However, I'm glad that Pakistan learned something from the last outage and we now have better redundancy. Internet access only slowed to a crawl for a couple of hours yesterday, right after the cut. It doesn't even feel like anything is wrong today and this is true for two of the major ISPs that I'm getting my service from.

We are increasingly relying on the net for business, news, entertainment and a lot more and it is the sole provider for a number of us in the tech sector. Though it's good to see that we're better prepared, the fact that something as simple as a wrongly anchored ship can bring cause disruption for weeks is frightening. Whatever happened to the Internet's ability to survive such catastrophes as nuclear attacks?

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Posted at 16:38pm PKT  Comments(1) | ¶

General

But I still feel 25.

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Posted at 20:17pm PKT  Comments(3) | ¶

Mobile

About a year back, I gave up the never-ending game of upgrading to the latest and greatest mobile and besides being a waste of money, one of the reasons was that all mobile phones suck. You may get used to one and might even start to make use of all its functions, but there will always be something missing. This is how I have gotten used to my clumsy P990i. I've come to live with it, but it hasn't helped my productivity much.

After just a few hours of playing with it, I think I've found one that sucks a lot less than others. There were some minor bugs with our web application that only seemed to affect BlackBerry users, so we just had to get our hands on one for "testing purposes".

Currently, Mobilink is the only carrier in Pakistan that has an established BlackBerry service using Edge (I know Ufone was testing one, but I couldn't find any details for it) and it really is pretty expensive. Then again, something that can help to fix a bug and also increase your output is worth the money.

We decided to go for the BlackBerry Curve (8310 with built-in GPS) and proceeded to hand it over to one geek after another to have them test it. Yesterday, it was my turn to play with it and I have yet to find anything wrong about it. I think it may finally be time to ditch the P990i and go get me one of these. The only doubt I have is with the Mobilink service and their requirement that you get it all from them (the service, the set etc.) and at inflated prices.

The lack of a touch display, side scroll wheel or arrow keys may take a little getting used to if you've been a Sony Ericsson user for a while. But the interface seems much easier and simpler after about an hour's worth of use. The pearly scroll ball feels like it's about to fall off, but works pretty well. The overall design is very slim, sleek and simply beautiful.

Some time ago, I installed Midpssh on my P990i to be able to login to my servers. However, it was quite unusable due to the unreadable display, slow connection and constant hangups and reboots of the buggy phone. This time, I've found a build of Midpssh specifically for BlackBerries and with some minor tweaking (the APN has to be set to connect.mobilinkworld.com under "Options --> Advanced Options --< TCP"), it is working very well. I tried to take a picture of the clear crisp interface I got after logging in, but my camera isn't good enough to capture the beauty of it.

And off course, the Google Maps application is amazing. Combined with the built-in GPS, it can pin point your location to within a couple of meters and even point in the direction that you are heading. Viigo is also one of the better syndication clients I have come across.

The camera is quite underpowered for something as nice as this, but the ability to directly post your photos to Facebook is pretty cool. It may be an outdated technology when compared to other smart-phones and services. However, I like it. Now you know what to get me for my next (...um..er... current?) birthday.

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Posted at 19:18pm PKT  Comments(3) | ¶

Technology

Saw this a couple of days ago. Scientists have created the darkest material ever seen (or unseen) out of carbon nanotubes. This material is the closest thing so far to "perfect black" which would absorb all types of light, at every angle.

On the left is the previous measurement of blackness. And on the right, is the new champ.

Anything covered in this material would appear as a uniform black "hole" in front of us as no light would be reflected back to show it's shape and contour. The Ninjas can finally rejoice.

Apart from the industrial applications, it would be a really cool thing to have in a theme park or even the corridor of your house. Imagine walking into a place with walls coated with this material. It would be akin to floating in an endless void or a dark tunnel. Anybody know where to get it?

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Posted at 15:09pm PKT  Comments(6) | ¶

Pakistan

Thank you Arsalan for forwarding this great piece about Pakistan. From the article:

When you watch television or pick up a newspaper everything is blood and gore,.... When you go to the country and you do your homework, you see that it's a fantastic economy, growing 6.5 to seven percent

The best thing is that it isn't written by a Pakistani or a Musharraf crony (as a reader of this blog once accused me of being). Good to see something positive amidst the doom and gloom stories and labels such as the world's most dangerous country.

There's still a lot of hope. Just have to know where to look for it.

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Posted at 18:06pm PKT  Comments(2) | ¶

General

Via BoingBoing. The History Channel, one of my favorites, will be airing their Life After People show, starting this Monday. The website offers a glimpse of the show's contents and discusses a number of issues that could arise in case civilization as we know it, ceases to exist. Should really be worth watching. From the site:

What would happen to planet earth if the human race were to suddenly disappear forever? Would ecosystems thrive? What remnants of our industrialized world would survive? What would crumble fastest?...

The site also offers a number of survival tips, in case you find yourself in the awkward position of being the sole survivor of a civilization meltdown, but they can come in handy even if that doesn't happen. I've really enjoyed watching a few episodes of Discovery's Man vs Wild show which also discusses survival in the wild so this should be right up my alley.

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Posted at 05:42am PKT  Comments(1) | ¶

Cars

Tata Group has just unveiled Nano, the world's cheapest car, which is about half the price of the cheapest existing cars on the market. At about Rs.100,000, or $2,500, this is quite an awesome achievement.

Air conditioning, automatic windows and powered steering can be considered unnecessary luxuries when it comes to providing a vehicle for the common man, but the Nano also compromises on some security. It lacks an air bag and is mostly made up of sheet metal and plastic. The use of adhesives instead of welding can also be a concern. But then again, its top speed is only 70kmph and I can imagine it being used mainly in India's urban areas where traffic is usually heavy and slow-moving.

Whatever the case, it would definitely be a better option for those that currently can only afford a motor-cycle. Plus, it actually looks quite good.

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Posted at 21:58pm PKT  Comments(5) | ¶

Internet Security

Over the span of the last few years, we have seen email, a once useful means of communication, transform into a hideous monster that appears to have outlived it's usefulness. We humans have a tendency to quickly get over something good that has happened to us, while even a small affliction can continue to torment us for a long period of time. As an example, take Spam; email's worst enemy and one of the biggest scourges of the Internet age.

At one point, I used to be so overwhelmed by spam, that I must have spent hours every day just dealing with it and tweaking the spam filters. All I ever wanted was to find a way to rid the world of the evildoers that caused so much pain and suffering to humanity.

There was an article on Wired a couple of months back on how Google thinks that Spammers are giving up. Though that may not really be the case, I'm tempted to believe this theory. Spam had stopped being an issue for me a couple of months ago and I hadn't even realized it. However, just like in Gmail's case, this is probably due to improved spam filtering than spammers mending their ways. In any case, after my last Linux mail system upgrade, the amount of spam appearing in my mailboxes has virtually dropped to zero without causing any false positives. It is as though it has become a firewall for spam.

Now on to the technical stuff. I've stopped using bogofilter since I haven't kept up with the project and my configuration was getting quite inefficient at filtering spam. Exim is a wonderful mail transfer agent and has recently added native support for a number of techniques and filters so it was about time I started fresh. I won't list down the whole configuration here, but these are the simple techniques I'm using that have seemingly worked wonders:

1. HELO header check

This is a simple Exim ACL that drops incoming mails that include my server's IP address in the mail header or any value that begins with an IP address.

Number of mails rejected using this method: about 30 per day

2. Sender verification

A large amount of spam is generated with the "From" address set to some random email address which may or may not exist. This technique verifies if this address actually exists and filters emails when it doesn't. I setup a small utility for email address verification on my network utilities site a few months back.

Number of mails rejected using this method: about 40 per day

3. DSBLs check

This must be one of the most effective checks. I'm using the zen.spamhaus.org blacklist to see if the sending party's IP has been blacklisted due to spamming. If it is, the mail gets dropped.

Number of mails rejected using this method: about 500 per day

4. ClamAV » Open Source Anti-Virus

In addition to its ability to find and filter email viruses, ClamAV has support for detecting spam using known checksums (via spam signatures from Sane Security). However, viruses aren't as common these days as they were some years back and ClamAV usually just sits there resting.

5. Spamassassin

Spamassassin runs as a separate daemon that gives a score to each email, based on various tests. This score indicates the likeliness of the email being spam or ham and can then be used to decide if it should be dropped, delivered or stored in the junk folder. It is a bit tough to configure, but once up and running, it works like a charm.

6. Block risky attachments

Infected attachments are also not very common these days, but I still block all exe, pif, bat, scr, lnk and com attachments.

7. Block character sets

Ever get that useless foreign language spam that you can't read a word of? Though not recommended, you can filter mails based on the language character set of an email. This is quite helpful if you suddenly start getting lots of spam from a specific region.

So, the conclusion is that there is still hope for mankind. We are no longer at the mercy of the pill-wielding, loan-peddling, scum of the earth and it isn't impossible to stand against them. The tide appears to be turning and with so many advances in mail filtering, I doubt the spammers can afford to keep up the fight for long. Not in the email arena, at least.

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Posted at 17:02pm PKT  Comments(3) | ¶