There was a lot of excitement from everyone and not only the pople who attended the Mobile World Congress Show 2012 in Barcelona on Feburary 25th. Yesterday even more excitement was brought to the crowd & all the HTC fans when just after 2 days of its launch HTC One X got two awards from Laptop Magazine and Tom’s Hardware.

The quad-powered monster with the Beats Audio & new Image Sense technology was awarded “Best Smartphone of MWC” by Laptop Magazine and “Best in Show” by Tom’s Hardware.

via: HTC Blog

The 3G License Auctions to be held on March 29, 2012 of which the PTA Chairman have given assurance recently could get postponed. Earlier it was just the EOIs of consultant due date (March 26)  indicating on this, but now we also have the official announcement of pre-bid meeting due on March 5 postponed to a later date.

This being done to facilitate interest shown by operators at the Mobile Word Congress held at Barcelona. The new date is yet to be announced. Official announcement on PTA’s website says:

Due to the great interest shown by operators through their representatives in World Mobile Congress being held in Barcelona, Spain, the Pre-bid meeting which was earlier to be held on March 5th, 2012 has been postponed to allow more time to the operators to evaluate the emerging situation and allow them more room to plan. The new date shall be announced shortly.

Nokia has unveiled a 41 megapixel camera-phone – designed so phone users can ‘zoom in’ without a bulky lens.

The 41-megapixel sensor is around three times more powerful than the ones in any existing handsets.

A Nokia executive says, ‘It shows what we can do.’

The phone will be launched in May and cost 480 Euros.

Nokia says the technology is designed so users can zoom in quickly and easily without losing picture quality.

Most smartphones use digital zoom functions where the picture quality drops when users ‘zoom in’ – in practice, the zoom functions are rarely used.

PureView’s huge 41-megapixel sensor lets users zoom in up to six times simply by ‘selecting’ an area – and because of the super-high resolution of the PureView, images still come out at five megapixels, the same as many normal smartphone cameras.

With video, users can zoom in up to four times and still shoot in 1080p Full HD.

‘When you zoom with the Nokia 808 PureView, in effect you are just selecting the relevant area of the sensor,’ says the Finnish company. ‘With no zoom, you simply use the full area of the sensor.’

The phone is bulkier than normal camera phones, according to reports from Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress, where it was unveiled, but even on full resolution, it shoots instantly.

The phone has been in development for years, Nokia said, and produces pictures that can be blown up to ‘poster size’.

Tech site Pocket-Lint said, ‘What it shows us though is that Nokia can create amazing technology in a device that is small and compact – relatively speaking.

‘We’re also told it will come to other handsets in the future. The reason you don’t want it is that, beside the amazing camera tech, it runs the company’s Symbian operating system, which is basically winding down.’

I have a much shorter commute since I moved from Chicago. This change has both merits and demerits. Obviously, all else being equal, it’s better to spend less time on a bus or subway, if you can help it. On the other hand, less time on the bus and/or subway also means less reading for fun. It’s taken me a while to get through the books listed below. Anyway, here are my thoughts on these books, arranged in alphabetical order of the authors.

Empires of the Indus: From Tibet to Pakistan, the story of a river by Alice Albinia

Really lovely read, this. Part political history, part travel diary, part long form essay, it’s just a beautifully rendered story about the Indus, its past, its future, the people who’ve relief on it for millenia, the civilizations it’s spawned, the wars its seen, how its drying up in Sindh, what China’s uber-development model means for it, and a gazillion other things I’m forgetting.  I really enjoyed this. You should buy it and read it.

Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi by Steve Inskeep

Gotta say, I was a bit underwhelmed by this. Maybe it’s because I was so, so looking forward to it that it couldn’t match my expectations. After all, I’m always on the lookout for books and articles about Karachi, mainly because it so rarely receives serious, sustained treatment from academics or journalists.

My main critique of the book is that it doesn’t really dive into Karachi the way one might expect the author to. There are, broadly speaking, two ways one can provide a great deal of depth. One is by studying extensively the academic scholarship on a region or phenomenon, and then placing one particular subject in that context. The other is by spending lots and lots of time with locals, living and breathing their lives, and writing up ones impressions after that.

I thin Inskeep goes for the latter option but it’s just not as powerful a story as I would’ve hoped. For instance, it really pales in comparison to Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City on Mumbai, in which I felt Mehta really got to know the characters inside out which in turn allowed the reader to know the characters inside out. There’s a superficial feel to the whole thing.

The one area where Inskeep definitely deserves credit is explaining how Karachi developed as a geographical construct at the neighborhood level. That’s something you don’t really see out there. But I found most everything else about the book quite meh.

Football against the enemy by Simon Kuper

I’m generally very interested in how socio-political identities form and are mediated through existing institutional and social structures, so this book was right up my alley. It’s concerned with how football matters beyond the pitch, and how the sport interacts with identities and socio-political cleavages. Why does Barcelona mean what it does to Catalunya? Why is Rangers-Celtic such a serious rivalry? What role did football play in the unification of South Africa post-apartheid?

I liked this book for the most part, but there was something throughout it that kind of bothered me., Kuper takes as a given the existing explanations for why football matters to a certain populace, rather than problematizing it and being skeptical of what he’s told by locals. It’s just something that gnawed at me throughout. I would also add that the chapter on Argentina and how its military junta (mis)appropriated football to their ends is fair enough regarding the facts, but there’s something about the tone. Kuper is a Briton writing in the early 1990s, with (presumably) the memory of the Falklans war fresh in his mind, and it’s very clear that he adopts mainstream British attitudes toward Argentina and Argentine football.

Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons by Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark

Thrill a minute, this book. Before I say anything else, I’d like to commend the authors for meticulously tracing about forty years of records, statements, archives, letters, memos and god knows what else to put this together. It’s incredibly well-researched and kudos to the authors for that.

This book is not just about A.Q. Khan, though he obviously features prominently in it. One thing that caught me by surprise (amongst others) is the extent to which the Reagan administration did Pakistan’s bidding in the 1980s. I mean, I knew they looked the other way and stuff while we were producing nukes. I had no idea how that process actually played out, until I read this. You won’t believe some of the shenanigans those guys were up to: covering up CIA findings, picking fights with other agencies, putting the Pentagon and State at odds with other arms of the U.S. government, knowingly lying to Congress about Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities, destroying careers and lives…it’s all there. And it’s quite unbelievable.

There’s obviously a lot of information on the Pakistan side as well, so this is a very valuable resource for anyone doing research in the areas of nuclear proliferation, acquisition, and the nuclear balance in South Asia. One thing worth noting is how crazy and nutty and evil Generals Hamid Gul and Mirza Aslam Beg come across. They’re the type of characters only the Zaid Hamid types like at the best of times, but even against the baseline of low expectations, they come across really badly. Their antics from around the time Zia died/was killed to about halfway through Nawaz Sharif’s first term really have to be read to be fathomed.

Pakistan: A Hard Country by Anatol Lieven

This book caused a lot of angst amongst people I respect and admire in the Pakistan intelligentsia but I didn’t quite understand why. Is it too favorable to the military’s point of view? Yes, undoubtedly. It puts a halo around their head in a way that most liberal types probably don’t appreciate. But I do think the extent of his generosity to the khakis has been overstated; this certainly doesn’t read like a 500 page Ejaz Haider column, if that’s what your impression is.

I recall when it came out that someone (sorry, I forget who) made a really big deal about Lieven using “democracy” in quote marks to talk about Pakistan. Well, the reason is very clear, and Lieven sets it out in the first few pages of the book: democracy does not imply constitutionalism or liberalism, and so while Pakistan may be a procedural democracy, it has a ways to go to become anything resembling a rights-based constitutional state. That’s all the point of the quote marks was, as I understood it.

There’s plenty Lieven either gets wrong or doesn’t cover at all, but his central point — that patronage is the oil that greases the wheels of the Pakistani socio-political system, and that this is both a blessing and a curse — is well taken. I would also commend him for getting out of Islamabad and Lahore, walking the streets and talking to “ordinary” Pakistanis, which very few foreigners do when writing about Pakistan.

The overall point I would make is that this book is aimed at a very specific audience: the OSD or State Department Pakistan-Desk staffer or the New York Times op-ed writer who thinks Pakistan is on the verge of collapse any minute now. He is trying to disabuse them of that notion. And he does a fairly good job of it. If you don’t know Pakistan very well but would like to learn more, this book is a decent place to start because it covers a lot of bases. It doesn’t cover any one area very well but that’s to be expected of a book of this type.

Young Mr. Obama: Chicago and the Making of a Black President by Edward McClelland

This book’s narrative ends in 2004, so if you’re looking for any insight into Obama’s run-in to the presidency, you should look elsewhere. No, this book is about Obama’s time as an Illinois State Senator, and in particular his story in Chicago — from his time as a lawyer to community organizer to politician (one of the lessons of the book is those three professions, at least in the way Obama practiced them, are not so different as they first appear).

I really enjoyed this one. It gives you really valuable insight into one of the central questions about Obama as a politician, that is, the mismatch between his soaring rhetoric and his incrementalist style. I know it’s said that politicians “campaign in poetry and govern in prose” but Obama really takes that to the extreme, and this book gives some answers as to why. It traces his political development, and shows that throughout his life (at least until the presidency), Obama’s main challenge has been to convince middle-class, moderate voters that he is not a liberal elitist in love with himself and his fancy Harvard law degree. As a consequence, he extends a hand to his opponents to convince them of his good intentions, even when they are uninterested in compromise. Moreover, his accomplishments in the Illinois Senate, limited though they are, were as a result of his adhering strongly to his oft-cited “don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good” thing.

There’s a lot of lessons here for people who wish to understand Obama, the man and the politician. I’d recommend it pretty strongly if you’re at all interested in the subject matter.

Fermat’s Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World’s Greatest Mathematical Problem by Simon Singh

Honestly, I don’t remember much about this book, given I read it about 4-5 months ago. One thing I do recall appreciating was that it was a lot less technical than (a) Singh’s other book I’ve read, The Codebook, and (b) what I expected. It’s mostly just the story of Fermat’s Last Theorem, which as Wikipedia will tell you, states

no three positive integers a, b, and c can satisfy the equation aⁿ + bⁿ = cⁿ for any integer value of n greater than two.

It goes into the ups and downs Andrew Wiles faced while proving the theorem, thought to be one of math’s toughest problems. Can’t say too much else about it, I’m afraid (though I have to say I was a teeny tiny bit disappointed that Wiles turned out to be a regular dude; I always like to imagine professional mathematicians as crazy guys with long hair who live with their mother and eat only cheese, kinda like this guy).

LAHORE: In what could simply be described as an enormous loss for Pakistan, Arfa Karim, the world’s youngest Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP), lost the battle of life after remaining admitted here at Combined Military Hospital on Saturday night,

Arfa Karim was only sixteen years old.

Her funeral prayers will be offered on Sunday at 10 AM in Cantt area.

Arifa Karim remained in intensive care at Combined Military Hospital (CMH) after suffering an epileptic seizure and cardiac arrest a few weeks ago. After battling for life for 26 days, one of Pakistan’s brightest brains left this world for good.

Born in 1995, Arfa Karim got the honor of World’s Youngest Microsoft Certified Professional when she was only 9 years old in 2004. Bill Gates, the Chairman of Microsoft, invited Arfa to visit the Microsoft Headquarters in the USA in the age of 10 only.

Later, in August 2005, Arfa was also honored by the Pakistan Government for the Fatima Jinnah Gold Medal in the field of Science and Technology which she received from then Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. She was also honored with Salaam Pakistan Youth Award in 2005 which has been set up by Pakistan’s only Nobel laureate Dr Abdul Salam. Moreover, Arfa has won the Presidential Award for Pride of Performance.

Arfa represented her country Pakistan on a variety of international fora. She was also included as the honorable guest by IT Professionals of Dubai for two weeks stay in Dubai. During that trip, Arfa was awarded by a number of medals and awards from various tech societies and computer companies working in Dubai.

Amazingly, she was certified for flying a plane at a flying club in Dubai at the age of 10.

Arfa also participated in Microsoft keynote session in the Tech-Ed Developers Conference held in Barcelona, in 2006. The theme of the conference was “Get ahead of the game” and Arfa was in fact a great example of being ahead of the game.
Source :

Quelle surprise. Leo Messi has won his third Ballon d’Or in a row. Who would bet against a fourth, or a fifth? I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that Cruyff predicted he’d win seven overall. Barring injury, or boredom on behalf of voters – the same boredom that saw Charles Barkley and Karl Malone win the MVP in the NBA over Michael Jordan in 1993 and 1997 respectively – I’d expect him to surpass that. Touch on wood.

One thing I would like to emphasize about Leo is that he is very, very fun to watch. That may seem a bit obvious but one can often be very good at one’s job and also be a bit boring or dry (think Sampras or Duncan or Kallis or McGrath). But not with him. Essentially every single time I watch him play, he makes me happy to be alive. I’m very serious when I say that. He brings a joy to people’s lives that would not exist otherwise.

Part of this, I think, is due to Messi himself loving the game in a boyish, playground kind of way. While the scientific and professional side of sports is all-encompassing — diet, nutrition, training, sleeping, even one’s sexual habits are now dictated by the exigencies of being a modern athlete — there do exist the odd exceptions. I have no doubt that Messi takes training and diet seriously. I also have no doubt that he’d rather not bother with it all. At the end of the day, he’s still the kid who likes to run rings around the opposition, the same way he was as a five year old.

I remember the only time I got to watch Barcelona live, in an exhibition match in Seattle. It gave me a chance to watch the players warm up before kickoff. The two players who took the stretching and pre-match exercises most seriously were Xavi and Puyol, as you might expect. The guy who took them least seriously was Messi. He trotted around, pretended to stretch without actually doing so, kicked a few balls, and generally just messed around without appearing too disrespectful to the coaching staff. He just wanted to play. None of this fancy sports engineering stuff. Just blow the whistle and let’s go.

His enthusiasm for the game, and only the game, is so refreshing and joyful. He’s still a street player in so many ways, a guy unaffected by agents and supermodels and pressure and the media. He just plays football. Long may it continue.

Anyway, having seen my fair share of Messi videos on Youtube, I can assure you that the one below is the best.

Side note: It is very clear from the voting for the award that certain countries — I’m looking at you, Azerbaijan, Burundi, New Zealand, and Pakistan, amongst others — should have their privilege of mattering for these awards revoked. Some truly shocking votes, really.

Arfa Karim Shows Signs of Life

Arfa Karim has Mashallah achieved so much at a very young age and brought fame and pride to Pakistan. This little girl now is on death bed and  I pray to Almighty Allah for her complete recovery and may she fight back and bring more glory and happiness in our lives.

ISLAMABAD — Arifa Karim, Pakistan’s pride who became world’s youngest Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) at 9 in 2004 continues to be in critical condition in death’s icy hands at CMH hospital in Lahore since she suffered cardiac arrest on December 22.

On Friday night, however, Arifa showed signs of life a day after doctors gave up all hope for her survival and suggested switching off her life support saying there was ‘no hope’.

“Arifa started showing some brain activity and twitched her fingers, her father Lt-Col. (Retd) Amjad Karim Randhawa,” told journalists.

The youngest-ever Microsoft certified professional, however, is still in critical condition, he said.

Doctors at the hospital said she was completely normal when she suddenly had an epileptic attack and was shifted to the Combined Military Hospital in Lahore. On December 28 she became unconscious and was put on ventilator. The family has been receiving calls from across the world for Arifa’s health and prayers for her recovery, her father said.

Born in 1995, Arifa became the youngest MCP in the world at the age of 9. The MCP involves building programmes into broader systems for business. Arifa was invited by Bill Gates to visit the Microsoft Headquarters in the USA when she was only 10-year-old. In August 2005, Arifa was also awarded the Fatima Jinnah Gold Medal in the field of Science and Technology by then Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. She also received the Salaam Pakistan Youth Award again in 2005 set up by Pakistan’s only Nobel laureate Dr Abdul Salam. She is also the recipient of the Presidential Award for Pride of Performance.

Arifa represented Pakistan on various international fora. She was invited by the IT Professionals of Dubai for a stay of two weeks in Dubai. During that trip, Arifa was presented with various medals and awards.

She also flew a plane at a flying club in Dubai at the age of 10, and received the first flight certificate. In November 2006, Arifa was invited by Microsoft to be a part of the keynote session in the Tech-Ed Developers conference held in Barcelona. The theme of the conference was “Get ahead of the game” and Arifa was presented as a true specimen of being ahead of the game. She was the only Pakistani among over 5,000 developers in that conference. – Counrtesy Khaleej Times

Bill Gates Hires Doctors for Arfa Kareem

According to her father Col Karim Microsoft contacted him and offered help. Directed by Bill Gates, the firm has hired doctors who would co-ordinate with the Pakistani doctors through vidoe conference and they may come to Pakistan if needed. Read more.

Technorati Tags: arfa karim, arifa, Bill Gtes hires doctors for arifa, youngest Microsoft Certified Professional

Well, it’s here again. For the seventh time in 2011, Barcelona will play Real Madrid.

It's on like donkey kong.

Here are some thoughts:

1. Mourinho being quiet is scary

I prefer a world in which Mourinho is whining and complaining about UEFA, Unicef, referees, schedule makers, and the flying spaghetti monster. It means he knows that he needs a leg up, that he needs to influence the refs and media, that he needs to get into the opposition’s heads. And the fact that he needs to do all that means that he knows, deep down, that his team is not good enough.

This time is different. I haven’t heard a peep from this guy. Neither has anyone else. In the pre-match press conference, he sent out his loyal assistant Karanka to do the talking.

This worries me. It tells me that he has the whole “quiet confidence” thing going. And frankly, it’s a fair state of mind. Madrid are, as we speak, playing better football than Barcelona. That’s just a fact. They are sharper, more energetic, and are playing with a frightening pace. It will be no surprise to see them win, especially at home — even though they only need a draw.

But then again, that’s what we said before the Super Cup, and look what happened there.

2. Selection issues

I’m pretty sure I know what team Madrid will put out (with a small question at right back): Pepe and Ramos as CBs; Marcelo at LB; Lass, Alonso and Khedia as center mids; Dive Maria, Ronaldo on the wings; and Hunting Cat Benzema up front.

With Barca, it’s a bit dicier. There are essentially three big issues. First, will Pep play a 3-4-3 or a 4-3-3? Second, assuming it’s a 4-3-3 (and I think it will be), who will partner Mascherano at CB: Pique or Puyol? My guess is Pique though I can see why certain diehards are very keen to see Puyol. Third, who will play up front? Leo and Alexis are guaranteed starters. But for the third spot, does Pep go with proven goalscorer and big-game player, David Villa, or the in-form guy who’s not really a forward but is scoring like one this year, Cesc Fabregas?

I’d go with Villa, for a couple reasons. One, with two weeks’ rest, he’d be itching to go. He will be very sharp. I can feel it. Two, it’s sometimes easier to answer a question if you turn it around. Rather than ask who we’d like to see start, why not ask who we’d like to see come on as a sub? For that question, the answer is clear: it has to be Cesc. Cesc can really change games when he comes on, and has done numerous times already this season. With Villa, I’m less certain that a 65th minute entry will do much. He needs to work himself into the game, at his age, and I’d rather start with him and bring Cesc on later, all else being equal.

3. Records

Pep has never lost at the Bernabeu as manager. In fact, his overall record against one of the strongest Madrid teams in history is scarcely believable: 11 games, 7 wins, 3 draws, and only one loss. Goal difference? 25 for, 8 against.

I point this out because inevitably, this glorious run will end some time. Maybe it ends tomorrow; if Barca lose, them winning the league is essentially impossible. But let no one forget what Pep and this team have already done, against a team that would kill and has killed every other team on the planet. Madrid is easily the priciest team in the world led by the most in-demand manager in the world, and up to this point, they haven’t been able to crack the code.

Here’s a record that might worry Madrid fans though: in 15 games against Madrid, Leo has scored 13 goals. In 13 games against Barcelona, Ronaldo has scored two goals, one of them a penalty. For whatever reason — I think it’s his predictability and one-dimensional-ness — Barca defenders always have the measure of him. I’m much more worried about Di Maria than Ronaldo, let’s put it that way.

4. Madrid’s defense can be taken advantage of

Marcelo is in great form going forward, but if he’s my LB, I’m always worried. Ditto for Ramos as CB. And Pepe is always liable to do something stupid.

Madrid have been leaking goals this year, while racking up lots and lots of goals at the other end. So it hasn’t really affected their position in the table. But they will concede, I’m almost certain of that.

5. Madrid will come out really, really fired up

The Supercup games in August were really interesting. It was the first time Madrid really attacked Barca in the Mourinho era. They came out really, really aggressive, and not just in a thuggish we-will-kick-anything-that-moves kind of way, but in a we’re-going-to-score-any-second-now-buddy kind of way. They will throw men forward, they will press Barca high up the pitch, they won’t allow Busi or Xavi any time on the ball, and they will seek to crowd out Messi and Iniesta. And they’ll have a raucous crowd behind them, a crowd that hasn’t seen Madrid beat Barca since the spring of 2008.

Tell you what though: if Barca can weather the early storm — say, the first 20 minutes — and still be level, that’ll be really good news. Madrid will, at some point, run out of steam, and some spaces will open up, particularly for Alexis (I imagine Madrid will defend quite narrowly) and Iniesta (who will operate in almost the same zone as Messi). That’s when Barca can strike. But you don’t want to be one or two goals down early, because then they’re going to just keep on running and keep coming at you.

My hope tomorrow is that Barca just take the heat out of the game, almost goad Madrid into wasting too much energy early. But my fear is that Madrid will be too hungry and too good.

Honestly though, I don’t feel the same sense of fear or trepidation as last year, particularly before the 4 clasicos in 17 days. At the time, I felt like Barca’s place in history was in question. It no longer is. If Madrid win tomorrow, I’ll be upset and devastated to be sure, but it really won’t be the end of the world. This team has given me enough happiness and joy to last me several lifetimes.

In the aftermath of the Taseer assassination, there has been plenty of reflection and strategizing amongst progressive and liberal minded people about how best to make Pakistan a less crazy country. I must confess that at this juncture, I am personally at a bit of a loss of how best to proceed. But one thing I would note is that trying to take on the right-wing (i.e. the rest of the country) on religious terms is bound to fail.

The logic of the religious-terms lobby is this: Pakistanis are religious people and things like the blasphemy law have strong religious connotations. Ergo, to defeat their worldview, you must engage with them on their terms, and show why things like the blasphemy law are unjust from an Islamic point of view.

This strategy is alluring but doomed to fail, in my view. The point is simple: you can’t beat someone at their own game. You can’t beat Barcelona by trying to out-pass them. You can’t beat Rafa Nadal by trying to out-muscle him from the baseline. And you can’t beat mullahs by citing the Quran or what the Prophet said to some random woman when she was throwing trash on him. Sorry, but it won’t work.

Why would he do it? Why would he try to out-hit me from the baseline? It's madness. Photo: AP

Here’s the thing: any time you cite some verse from the Quran or some story from 1400 years ago to show that you’re right, the mullahs will cite some other verse from the Quran or some other story from 1400 years ago to show that they’re right. I hate to break this to you, but organized religions tend to send mixed messages on everything from rights to violence to duties to whatnot (and yes, fundos, I’ve read the Quran — twice, once with translation). So that’s a bit of a cul de sac in that debate.

Similarly, citing Jinnah and that “you are free to go to your temples” speech is also bound to fail. Jinnah was a lawyer and a politician, and lawyers and politicians make careers out of saying different things at different times to suit different audiences. That’s their job. The fact is, Jinnah stoked communal sentiment when he had to, and made secular-progressive sounds when he had to. So again, I say potato, and you say death to Israel — who’s to say who’s right? More generally, once you’ve ceded the substantive space upon which you will engage in combat, you’ve already lost half the battle.

Personally, I liked an idea that Cafe Pyala mentioned, which is to hoist the mullahs, their allies, and their enablers on their own collective petard. Pursue cases of blasphemy of other religions against them — find like-minded lawyers, strategize on which courts to file complaints in, and go after them the way they go after helpless people. Filing cases against high profile figures (leaders of religious parties, “scholars” and other assorted mullah types) as inciters to violence would also not be a bad idea, but I’m not sure how the legalities of all this would work. It would be great if we could get some lawyers to speak up about the viability of some of these tactics.