Saturday, October 20, 2007

To Expect Effectively

Pakistan does not have a single problem; there are myriad of them, and each of them is gigantic. To name a few, education, medical, poverty, jobs, social issues, injustice, politicians, army etc etc. and above all the people and their grossly unrealistic expectations.

The biggest problem in Pakistan among all is that people waiting in the hope of some Messiah to arrive and solve the problems in a blink of an eye. This problem alone is enough to fail the country. On practical grounds, moreover, the masses fail to convey their wishes and desires to the elected/about to be elected members. There more emphasis on flaunting some affinity with a politician in any possible sense.

Given this problem alone, Pakistan is around 300-500 years behind where the West stands now.

In order to demand a right one has to know about the right first, and to know that, the meaning of the latter has to be known. Here, on one hand as the people are fed up of dictatorship (as they are possibly told to be), on the other hand the meaning of democracy in grossly misunderstood. The meaning of democracy possibly tantamounts to having a military ruler dethroned. At the same time it is known to few that the top bidders to the throne of Islamic Empire of Pakistan have their children's destinies entwined to the political parties they head.

Here the psyche of people of Pakistan is of particular interest. People are very "icon-o-philic". They love huge figures. Once they love someone, they will remain loyal forever; defiance is not an option, no matter how many times their own trust is betrayed. And ever-lasting love ensues from a mixed feeling of fear and a severe inferiority complex.

It sounds as if rest of the problems pertaining to Pakistan are here to stay for a long time, as long as the people as a whole dont learn to expect in the effective manner.

Political Psyops

AA,
Given the ample space available for scribbling articles, under utilization of the blog, plenty of free time and a political upheaval in the country, I shall use Psyops to litter my political thoughts.

Pakistan has now become the center-stage of geo-politics. And as George Friedman quotes in his famous book (the name of which is skipped here for the mere reason of brevity), the end-game of WOT shall be played there. It is definitely scary. However, do we owe a thought to the very problems the country faces? Or is it all futile. I guess I should unwind my brain of the domestic issues first.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

A scholarly conference is not much better than its program comittee

Some general guidelines for guaging the worth of a conference would be something like:

1) Its relevance i.e. How relevant is it to your research area. Some conference just invite everyone and do not have specific goals.
2) It reputation. For instance everyone in the area of communications networks would know the worth of getting a paper published in IEEE Infocom or ACMs sigcomm.
3) A major and often over-looked factor is to have a look at the Technical Programme Committee of the conference. This is very important and the candidate should have a look at the members in the TPC before actually submitting. Once again, two conferences might have almost the same king of TPC in terms of whether whcih institutions have representations in them. However, one conference might have more seasoned researchers than the other even though they belong to the same universities.

Sunday, June 18, 2006

A one slide Tutorial!


I had to make a presentation on my work on GP. Just to explain the basic GP, I thought that maybe it'd better to make a small diagram. Clueless for a while on as to what to do, I came up with the picture shown above. I really find it both funny and interesting as an explanation of "How GP Works". I find this picture to be quite comprehensivly describing how it all works out. Not only it eases the explanation of a GP cycle to researchers, it can also evoke some interest in this field among youngsters. I hereby publish this picture as an open source. Evolve it as per your wish. If by any chance you end up making some interesting changes to it then kindly do let me know.

Regards...

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Evening!

Hi all, it is almost evening here. And it persists like this for a while because the twilight zone is a bit bigger where I live. This a beautiful picture really and was shot by alina as she was using my camera like a machine gun that day.

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

About Psyops

Hi all,
So although the blog has been named psyops. It really hasn't got to do with psyops. I just didnt have a good idea on as to how should I name my brain child so I named it quite randomly (conditionally still) as psyops.

The same would goes into it; all random stuff. Just like what u r reading now. Though, I might come up with some cool ideas later on during the process of writing.

More often, I would still like to write general things about life such as attitudes, feelings, morality, emotions, emotional intelligence etc etc. as opposed to the more technical (or academic so to say) stuff such as mathematics, statistics, programming, DSP or the likes. And I think I would come up with simple ideas (thoughts). At the same time I must say that it is the simple things of life that are more important (and charming at the same time too (maybe)).

Monday, March 27, 2006

The Entry!

Salam,
I have been wondering since a long time now that there should be medium through which I could voice my thoughts to people with convenince. I think that I have found the place. And sometimes, as it is the case with the poets, one is looking for someone who could listen. And it is quite funny though that u r even willing to pay a price sometimes but u dont find the appropriate ears.
This seems to be a fine idea i.e. blogging. It seems that I have a whole world to talk to. Irrespective of whether someone is listening or not, it atleast provides me a dumping yard for my quite random, bizarre and sometimes not so healthy or charming thoughts.
So my name, as u already might know, is Adil Raja. Currently I am based somewhere in Europe. But I belong to somewhere in Pakistan.