Manager/director Acrologix, Muhammad Imran Rafiq Ch.

A couple of days back we were in conversation with Manager/director Acrologix, Muhammad Imran Rafiq Ch. We were pleased to have met a charming personality who showered us with innovative ideas. Being an inspiration for the young ones entering this Industry, he enlightened us with his knowledge and his professional experience.

While he was working with an international organization, he learnt the importance of being Pakistani. He discovered the secret of how to prove himself and show his skills among the international working environment. According to him, his being a Pakistani disturbed his coworkers, but due to 9/11 catastrophe, they despised him and were not impressed by his work.

This is where I learnt to keep my head up high and prove, that yes, Pakistan has given me a lot. This was the time when I wanted to show the world that Pakistanis are highly dedicated to their work. No matter what the circumstances are they can easily adjust themselves in accordance with them and grow at a remarkable pace.

I learnt the weaknesses of my coworkers and that is when I succeeded and learnt to move forward in an environment where I was treated as a minor. Also, most of the people working around me were Indians, so you can well imagine the treatment I received.

We should never compare Pakistan with other countries. People coming back from abroad arrive with a lot of expectations. This is completely wrong. Knowing the potential which exists here I believe that we should first understand the worth of being Pakistani, realize and attain our goals. Then and only then we will be able to compare ourselves with the world outside.

PSEB is playing a tremendous role in introducing Pakistan to the international market through the exhibitions they have done. But at the end of the day it depends completely upon the Industry itself whether it participates or not.

There is no concept of knowledge sharing in our industry, only competition exists. Today this competition has lead us to a point where they are standing individually and there is no collaboration and cooperation among the companies whatsoever. Each is competing in the international market against each other. Each company should be able to share experience with the other so that development starts at a fast pace allowing growth and progress in the true sense. Achievements should be shared. Outsourcing is possible only when companies know the caliber of other companies, and this is where collaboration starts.

In Pakistan due to lack of awareness among people. Younger lot does not think. It has become a norm nowadays that as soon as someone starts heading towards B.com or MBA or any other program, then there is a herd of students who wish to pursue the same. At the end of graduation and at the beginning of professional career there are thousands of them with the same degree, with the same skills looking for the same jobs. These jobs are in ratio as compared to the number of graduates’. That is when the actual problem starts. Our basic problem is that we are more concerned about the amount of money earned, everything else comes afterwards.

When I did my Bs, it was considered as a valuable degree, there was lesser competition and more number of jobs available in market. At that time students were more interested in studying. And the resource being produced from various universities was highly innovative. But if we compare that time with today, I personally feel highly disappointed because the resource that was being produced then is not available these days. Either teacher or environment which is being produced is lesser in caliber as compared to the lot which was produced at that period of time. Today, competition among students and among software houses is rapidly increasing, and choices are limited.

There are many who give more importance to practical knowledge as compared to degrees. But my suggestion to those who wish to study, even after gaining practical experience is that, they need not to worry about their GPAs. The reason of which is that when you have practical experience then you can move forward very easily. But at the same time I would like to stress more upon education. It is definitely more important and once you have been devoted and produced 100% results then it is all that matters because, that is when success moves towards you.

I wished to pursue my career in medical; I had great interest in biology. It was destiny which brought me to this field. The basic reason being that I have been here from the past 9 years, and a challenging environment keeps me going, and allows me to move forward at a fast pace. Because, it further develops your interest. If I were not in IT Industry I would have been an excellent lawyer as I am greatly interested in discussions.

The reason I stayed here for so long is because I feel as if this is my own Software House. Since I have been working over here from the past nine years, joining someplace else cannot be an option. I enjoy my work, deep inside I am greatly satisfied with what I do and with what I am. It is the new and upcoming challenges which have helped me in moving forward. If such challenging environment had stagnated only then my time here had ceased.

Contributed by Faisal Shahzad

How To Speed Up Your Windows XP By Disabling File Indexing:

File indexing is a Windows service like many others is totally useless – unless you search alot on your computer. As most users don’t, it’s a good idea to disable it to speed up actions like opening and closing files and folders on your Windows XP.

In order to disable the Indexing Service:

Go to “My Computer” and right click on your hard drive. At the bottom of the window that opens, you should see a check box titled “Allow Indexing Service to index the disk for fast file searching.”

Protect your Media identity:

Like many other audio players, Windows Media Player rushes out to the Internet to find information for you when you play a CD. Some of this information, such as song titles and album art, is useful, but Media Player also identifies your copy of Media Player to the site where it's receiving data. Why? According to the help file, "The server uses this unique identifier to monitor your connection. By monitoring your it, the server can make adjustments to increase the playback quality and to alert you about events that occur when receiving streams over the Internet."
If you're disturbed by this exchange of information, here's how to cease it.

In Windows Media Player, click Tools > Options and go to the Player tab. Notice the option that says "Allow Internet sites to uniquely identify your player?" Turn it off.

Enable Clear Type:

When you use the windows, sometimes there are fonts and colors are not sharp and blurry and irritating, so this trick helps.

Easy way- Click on or cut and paste link below:

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/cleartypeactivate.htm?fname=%20&fsize=

or

• Right click on a blank area of the Desktop and choose Properties
• Click on the Appearance Tab; Click effects
• Check the box: Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts
• In the drop down box select: Clear Type

Turn of CD Auto Play:

• Open My Computer
• Right click on your CD ROM and choose Properties
• Click on the Auto Play tab
• In the drop down box you can choose the Action for each choice shown in the drop down box

Or

1. Go to Start->Run->gpedit.msc
2. Computer Config -> Administrative Template -> System
3. Double click Turn off Autoplay
4. Enable it.

Increase BROADBAND:

This is for broad band connections. I didn’t try it on dial up but might work for dial up.

1. Make sure your logged on as actually "Administrator". Do not log on with any account that just has administrator privileges.
2. Start - run - type gpedit.msc
3. Expand the "local computer policy" branch
4. Expand the "administrative templates" branch
5. Expand the "network branch"
6. Highlight the "QoS Packet Scheduler" in left window
7. In right window double click the "limit reservable bandwidth" setting
8. On setting tab check the "enabled" item
9. Where it says "Bandwidth limit %" change it to read 0

In some system immediate effect is earned while some require to re-boot. This is more of a "counter what XP does" thing. In other words, programs can request up to 20% of the bandwidth be reserved for them, even with QoS disabled, this is no big deal and most programs do not request it. So, although QOS has caused a big stink because people think it reserves 20% of their bandwidth, you can still disable it, just to be sure, hehe.

Do Not Highlight Newly Installed Programs:

Tired of that annoying little window that pops up to tell you that new software is installed? If it gets in the way when you are logging off, turn it off completely.

• To do this Click Start, right-click at the top of the Start menu where your name is displayed, and then click Properties.
• In the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog box, on the Start Menu tab, click Customize.
• Click the Advanced tab, and then clear the Highlight newly installed programs check box.
• Click OK, and then click OK again.

Now that message won’t be popping up when you least want to see it.

Speed up the Start Menu:

You can use this tip to speed up the Start Menu in Windows XP release candidate 1. You can customize the speed of the Start Menu by editing a Registry Key.

1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. Type Regedit in the box, and then click OK.
3. Expand the menu in the left panel and select the HKEY_CURRENT_USERControl PanelDesktop folder.
4. Scroll down in the right panel and double click on the MenuShowDelay file.
5. In the Value Data box, change to default value for the menu speed from 400 to a lesser number, such as 1.
6. Click OK.

Caution: Incorrectly editing the registry may severely damage your system. Before making changes to the registry, you should back up any valued data on your computer.

Show yourself or don't Show yourself:

Only the Administrator can set up new user accounts (go to Control Panel > User Accounts > Create A New Account). You can select a picture to identify the account. When you're logged on to the system under your username, this picture, along with your username, peeks out at you from the top of the Start menu. There are a slew of 48x48-pixel bitmap images to choose from within XP. They're housed in D:Documents And SettingsAll UsersApplication DataMicrosoftUser Account PicturesDefault Pictures. But why limit yourself? You can also copy any graphic you want into this folder or browse for another from your hard drive. Usable file types are BMP, GIF, JPEG, or PNG. However, always use a square picture, to limit the white space on the side. Your image can be any size but will be displayed as 48x48-pixel image, so a close-up works best.

Hide yourself:

Once you've created a user account, password-protect it to keep other users from viewing your files, Favorites, and cookies. Why? You may not want your child to see the note that you're sending to his or her teacher, or you may be planning someone's surprise party. (Note: Anyone with an Administrator account can still see them.)

Worried about remembering your password? Create a hint to help you when you initially create it by following the prompts during setup. XP stores the password hints in the Registry at Hkey_local_machineSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrent VersionHints.

What if the hint doesn't help? Any user or Administrator can create a password reset disk, which you can use to log on and create a new password. Go to Control Panel > User Accounts and select "Prevent a forgotten password" in the Related Tasks box on the left. Follow the wizard's instructions. After creating the disk, find a safe place for it. Don't forget the password or where you put the disk. Someone else could use it to change your password without you knowing it.

NOTE: It is somewhat risky to touch the registry entries, but also these tricks make the system fast and more efficient. : )

About The Author:

Faisal Shahzad is currently working as a Software Engineer and maintains a blog at www.faisalshahzad.com

Let us formulate a short definition for you;
Mr. Ten Percent is a dealer or an agent who takes of 10% of your earnings as payment for his services. This act takes place without your knowledge. And after sometime it leaves you bankrupt and your PC corrupted.

Mr. Ten Percent created many viruses. In reality he is the scam plotter. He produces viruses, which have complex codes. These are used only while attacking. Like a virus spreads very quickly inside the human body, this mega virus corrupts everything that comes in its way. Mr. Ten Percent’s virus has spread far and wide crushing many PCs in its way. We decided to bring it right in front of our reader’s attention before it is too late and before their PCs are completely mortified.

It is actually amazing to observe the number of people who are totally corrupted by these viruses. It is amazing to observe how Mr. Ten Percent is scamming against every PC behind the games thus providing a path to the virus.
Each time a new game is introduced, a plan also comes in the forefront. All the users helped Mr. Ten Percent plan and become what he is today. These collective Ideas basically result from the Initial enthusiasm which actually brought

everyone together. And that is when the actual virus was created which slowly and gradually spread across the boundaries of our country. The virus turned from bad to worse and greatly affected performance of the PC. It was not as bad as people had said but was much, much worse.

With the initial enthusiasm of creation, Inevitable Problems emerge
Mr. Ten Percent has been around us for more than two decades and decides to stay with us as long as it wishes. By catastrophic success we meant, success for Mr. Ten Percent and catastrophe for the rest. But this point where there has to be someone to be blamed for the catastrophe. So, Mr. Ten percent jumps into the crowd and searches for a true candidate.

Search for Someone to Blame
We wonder how someone falls a prey to his trap very easily. Then starts a phase when there is a constant search for someone to blame for all the damages that occurred. And this search is always successful. They find smaller virus, blame it for corrupting the data and here we go. Slowly and gradually everyone and everything became normal again, but in reality the problems and situation ended up deteriorating.
Punishment of those who are innocent
Finally the search halts and those who are innocent are blamed for everything that has gone wrong inside the PC. Every corrupted folder and file is completely his responsibility of the innocent who has been targeted by and Mr. Ten percent goes off to his home happily in order to

Celebrate, Praise and reward the non-participants
Programmers are decoded. That is when we realize that the road towards success has already been occupied, rather blocked by Mr. Ten Percent, and this road was in reality became the road towards a catastrophic success.
And that is when we discover a catastrophic success in its cruelest form, ending the PC, eradicating it and bringing everyone to the point of insanity. Where Ten percent upgrades itself towards hundred percent, while the rest of the world faces demise.

Windows Vista introduced the Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM), which allowed new features such as virtualized video memory and scheduling of concurrent graphic contexts. Windows 7 also uses WDDM, albeit a newer version.

Microsoft had promised that Vista users will also be given an opportunity and will be able to download and use DirectX 11. It included DirectX 11 in a beta version of its "Platform Update" available in September. The final version is now available via Windows Update.

Being composed of four different parts, the Platform Update is meant for computers running Windows Server 2008 SP2 and Vista SP2. These four parts include, The Windows Graphics, Imaging, and XPS Library contains DirectX 11, DirectCompute for hardware accelerated parallel computing, and the XPS Library for document printing. Unfortunately, Windows XP users will still have to stick to DirectX 9.0c, as the older OS does not support WDDM.

Microsoft usually makes a redistributable DirectX runtime available to developers and for download. It is meant for computers without an internet connection or for users who have multiple computers, and is often bundled with games. The current redistributable is from August, and there is no word on when an updated runtime will be available.

“We will have two Android devices (for the holidays in the U.S.),” said Jha, adding that deals are already in place with two major carriers with more to follow. “We also have plans for more devices in the first quarter of 2010.”

The Motorola Droid is the first Android 2.0 smartphone. With Google already stating that it expects 18 Android phones to be released by the end of 2009, a target that seems like it will be hard to hit with only eight or so released thus far.

With Motorola claiming a new mark with its Android in market, it seems that Android will be the most important for the company as they will finally bring it back to the race. The Android launches “will get us back in the game in smartphones,” said Jha.

It is also believed that Motorola’s handset business depends on entirely on Android. In its second quarter earnings results, Motorola said that its mobile device sales were $1.8 billion, down 45 percent from a year ago. The operating loss for the quarter was $253 million, better than the $346 million loss a year ago.

However, 20 new headsets mean a lot of choice for Motorola’s fans. So 2010 will be a year of a lot of options for the people who are anxiously waiting for Motorola to claim lost grounds.

While Windows 7 makes its mark on the worlds market, IBM and Canonical announced their collaboration in order to target windows 7 customers from all over the world. Their cloud- and Linux-based collaboration package turns out to be cheaper than Microsoft-based alternatives.

The IBM Client, based on IBM productivity and collaboration software, helps organizations save up to 50 percent per seat on software costs,as compared to the expensive nature of Microsoft-based desktop. This is not it, it also provides its clients with facilities for avoiding requisite hardware upgrades. The package allows companies to use their existing PCs, lower-cost netbooks and thin clients. It includes Lotus Notes and other Lotus applications such as Symphony and LotusLive.com, an online collaboration suite which lets distributed groups manage activities and tasks, share documents, network, and hold Web meetings with up to 1,000 participants. The companies say that since the package is based on Eclipse, Linux and Web standards, it can integrate with "any" third-party software.

The press release claims that Microsoft shops considering a Windows 7 migration face costs of up to $2,000 for many users, owing in part to added hardware requirements for Microsoft's new operating system. But IBM and Canonical sates that their package can be easily utilized on PC's which are currently being utilized by organizations. This package will also run on low-cost client machines and even netbooks. IBM is also offering professional services from IBM Global Technology Services and IBM Business Partners in order to aid with installation and other integration tasks to their clients.

Ubuntu releases are scheduled. Canonical released 9.10 RC Karmic Koala will release finally on 29 Oct 2009. Canonical releases new versions of Ubuntu every six months. Its next release, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, which aims for ten-second boot time will ship in April 2010.

Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala (Desktop) Preview
There are many new things Canonical brings for us in current RC 9.10 Edition. This new version has emerged in front of us with better boot time, enhanced graphics, new empathy messenger (good pidgin), some Gnome(Desktop) interface changes, Ubuntu Software Center which replaces the Add/Remove Software and a special Ubuntu One (sync you file and folders online).

Ubuntu One

Ubuntu One is a very exciting free service which provides us storage application and service on web which is operated by Canonical Ltd. The service enables users to store and sync files online and between computers. Ubuntu One has a client application which is installed in it by default under the Applications>Internet menu. A free Ubuntu One account offers 2 GB of storage. Users may upgrade to 50 GB by paying a monthly fee of $10.

Ubuntu Software Centre
It is a new interface for installing softwares provided by Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic. User can avail free softwares which are already installed. In the older version (Add/Remove) we started we had to either remove or install them. But now it has removed this limitation. Ubuntu Software Centre is more user friendly, self explanatory and easiest way to search and install softwares.

Gnome Interface Changes
Is an Old menu navigation of System>Shut Down/Log Out menu restored. This feature was removed in Jaunty, making the user-switcher menu the only easy way to end a Gnome session. An entry for the Gnome Control Centre has also finally been added to the System>Preferences menu in Karmic. This application, which is similar to the Control Panel in Windows allows users to configure various aspects of Gnome. It has always been a significant part of Ubuntu.

Messages Empathy Added, Pidgin Drop
Karmic has replaced Pidgin with Empathy, which is an instant-messaging client built by Gnome developers. The decision to drop Pidgin might have been due to its lack of support for video chat. But pidgin lovers, have no fear, as you can install pidgin through Ubuntu Software Centre.

Better boot time
Ubuntu boot time has improved dramatically. The average boot time lasts from 15 to 20 seconds only. The next boot time in the upcoming release will be reduced to 10 seconds.

Ubuntu 9.10 Server Edition
Ubuntu 9.10 includes images for common use on the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud as well as Amazon's EC2. These images allow you to dynamically build Ubuntu based virtual machines on remote servers and use them for whichever purpose you need. If you or your company does any work with cloud computing, then it is necessary to check out Ubuntu's Enterprise images with UEC or EC2.

Demo Ubutnu Desktop

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYgWE6Svpag&NR=1&feature=fvwp

Download Ubuntu
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

About the Author:

Haroon Idrees is currently working as a Software Team Lead. He maintains his blog at www.haroonidrees.com