Blog about the Net, Pakistan and more

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(7) | ¶

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(9) | ¶

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(7) | ¶

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(3) | ¶

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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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(8) | ¶

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) | ¶

Pakistan

It looks like there is a severe shortage of power across the country. Even the best areas of the Capital, those that were hardly touched by the electricity and power issues of the 80s and 90s, aren't spared and are suffering the same scheduled and unscheduled power outages as the rest of the country.

The worst part is that it isn't just the total outages at specific times that are the problem. The power itself is very unstable. Ever since we returned from the holidays, the work PCs randomly power down and then start back up again. A sort of delayed reboot. At first, I had a couple of the systems replaced, but then realized that it had something to do with the power. No solution to the problem so far.

The demand has definitely gone up quite a lot recently while I doubt there has been any project of note to increase the supply. The dry spell of the last few months probably didn't help the hydro-power plants either and the silting of the aging dams has actually decreased their power generation capacity over the last few years.

I remember reading this article a couple of years ago about Pakistan being one of the countries where some of the world's newest reactors (either pressurized water reactors or hopefully, the pebble bed type) were to be erected. I wonder how far along those projects are or have they also fallen victim to the uncertainty surrounding this nation?

More on the load shedding here on Islamabad Metblogs.

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Posted at 20:15pm PKT  Comments(21) | ¶

Pakistan

There is a taboo in the Pakistani society about criticizing the life and death of the deceased. This was one of the major reasons that even the staunchest opponents of the late Benazir Bhutto avoided making any statements against her after her recent assassination.

Maybe this is why I found this poignant Time magazine article, about the Martyr without a Cause, worth sharing.

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Posted at 13:43pm PKT  Comments(6) | ¶

General

The new year is upon us. May 2008 usher in lasting stability and prosperity for everyone and overcome the tragic events that marked 2007. Best wishes to all.

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Posted at 17:20pm PKT  Comments(1) | ¶