Archive for May, 2010

PTA fails to keep people informed about banned and unbanned websites

PTA Updates Page Snapshot

PTA Updates Page Snapshot

It is 30th may today and the last update on PTA’s website about the blocked websites was on 2oth of may. They even didn’t even mentioned any other blocked websites other than the Facebook and Youtube on their website. Hundreds of URLs were blocked and some of websites like Facebook , wikipedia, youtube and many more had faced blanket ban but PTA never mentioned about these banned websites on their website.

Youtube is already unblocked few days ago but still no update about that on their website. Whats more important is Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) never published the details of blocked websites over the internet nor they have updated people about when certain websites are being banned or unbanned. It would have been much better if things would have been much more transparent.

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Proxy websites blocked in Pakistan, Whats the point?

Proxy Websites Banned in PakistanIn connection with the issue of blasphemous violent content, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) blocked many websites and many people including me supported this decision of PTA. Banning the websites in Pakistan should have not mainly to prevent local people from accessing the blasphemous content but to make a statement to sites that your racism regarding the religion will not be accepted.

Considering the fact that Pakistan is an Islamic state and people at least have love for prophet Muhammad, no one would be willing to see that blasphemous content. But unfortunately PTA took things here differently, they gone few steps further and also blocked the proxy website.

Chairman PTA: We have blocked a number of sites having the blasphemous content and also blocked some proxy websites, so that the content can’t be accessed in Pakistan in anyway.

Blocking the original websites was more than enough to make a statement and blocking the proxy websites was unnecessary step. Ideally no one would try to access that blasphemous content via proxies, at least those who follow Islam and love Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and if some one would, well every one is responsible for his/her own faith.

In fact the guys blocking the proxy websites didn’t thought about the positive features and capabilities which proxies enable us with, they only kept eye on negativity and end up blocking most of proxy websites known to them.

At times proxy websites are very useful, some times certain ISP dns servers don’t have most updated IP records against domains or have problems with certain websites, in this case the proxy websites are the only handy tool to access them.

Finally I would say, it would have been better, if ban must have been symbolic for the world other than just to restrict the locals from looking at the content. Whatever else is done, I am in full favor of that but not in favor of blocking the proxy websites which still are blocked in Pakistan.

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Google brings Pacman fun on 30th anniversary of Pacman game

Pacman Game on Google home page

Pacman Game on Google home page

Google is rightly believed to be the fun loving organization. They have proved it once again, on 30th anniversary of Pacman Google have embedded the special Pacman plug in into its logo as shown above in the image. Please notice the insert coin button which is placed on place of “I am feeling lucky” button and it initiates the Pacman game. This was the fully featured playable game plugin with proper scoring in place. The plugin is embedded in to Google search page into the logo for 48 hours as part of Pacman’s 30th anniversary celebration.

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Ban on Facebook in Pakistan, right or wrong?

Facebook is banned in PakistanOne would say why are we even talking about the ban being right or wrong when Facebook proved to be racist in matter of removing the draw day. Making one thing clear here, Facebook guys remove any page with more than 10,000 fans on just 700 terms of use violation requests against it, but this was not the case about the page which was setup to hold that blasphemes cartoons contest.

Coming back to the original topic, why are we even thinking on the ban being right or wrong, most would say it right because of the Facebook’s resist behavior in this matter. But there are people  who are not in support of this ban, they think that the URLs where such kind of content is added must be blocked but not the whole Facebook site. Well for their information the ban is not here to prevent the people of Pakistan from seeing such kind of content -  which they will not see even is not blocked – the ban is here in the first place to send a message to Facebook or any such websites that if you will come up with any resist behavior for us, we then do not need to even use your sites, can live very much without them.

There are people who were in favor of Ban on Facebook from day one, they speaked out many different ways, some recorded their protest via online posts and tweets and there were others who came in with peaceful protests on they city roads of all major cities and towns of Pakistan. This all led to the Ban order on Facebook by Lahore High Court, which is implemented countrywide for good.

What we have discussed above is the first extreme, now there are other people from Pakistan who are completely against the ban. Well they are not only against the ban, some of them have officially got recorded their protest against the ban and speaked up against it. One such example is this press conference against the ban on Facebook in Pakistan which appeared on Awab Alvi’s blog who is a well known and popular blogger from Pakistan.

Awab Alvi: While we recognize that sites on the Internet are used to spew hatred and incite violence, we steadfastly believe that governments have no right to control access to information. We believe that every citizen has an inalienable right to freely access information and by censoring Facebook, the Government of Pakistan has taken away that right

Well I will second that opinion, this time the demand for ban was initiated from the people of Pakistan, not from the government or the judiciary of Pakistan. Most of Pakistanis still stand by this decision and hope for a ban until Facebook realizes that they are doing something which is not liked by billions of people worldwide and that is the racism which came forward in matter of Draw day.

I have listened people saying where Facebook have 400 million users from world wide how stopping access of just 2 million or so users from Pakistan is going to hurt Facebook. First thing we are making it clear to the world that no such religious racism will be tolerated by Pakistanis and secondly its definitely going to hurt Facebook if they are to continue such dual behavior. Facebook is ranked two in world websites ranking and the fight for the number one slot is on, such behaviors are cost Facebook to be pushed back to number three or four instead of making it to the number one slot.

Finally we will boycott any website which shows the tolerance for the content  which hurts the feelings of believers of any religion. Religion is the personal matter of any being living on planet earth and if you are heating the feelings of believers of any religion, weather its Islam or any other religion, you have no right to be called a civilized human being and nations who show tolerances for such content are not civilized nations at all.

Do write your views about the decision of banning Facebook in Pakistan below as comments and whether you are in favor of that decision or not. Feel free to express your views. Subscribe to our Twitter page and update emails from sidebar to keep yourself updated on latest information.

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Pakistan cricket is to play T20 World Cup semi-final against Australia today

Pakistan vs Australia Cricket T20Today Pakistan cricket team will be playing semi-final of T20 world cup against Australia. Reminding you that Pakistan Cricket team is this time defending their T20 world cup championship as  being the previous T20 world champions. Pakistan cricket team’s performance have not been good in “Test”  and “One Day International” cricket lately. Even in this T20 Pakistan team was once out of the tournament and their only chance was the victory of England over New Zealand which put the Pakistan team back in the tournament on basis of their run rate advantage over the new zealand team which had to head back home after England’s victory.

Pakistan team is not playing today’s match with full strength, also they have not been in form lately so the odds are not very much in favor of Pakistan cricket team but still we are hoping the victory. Also if the players give their best nothing is impossible. This country is full of cricket enthusiasts who always seem to back the cricket team and once again hopping that the team performs well.

Another concern is weather, rain is expected at the venue. If it happens and not allows the match, the Australia will automatically be in final and national team will be forced to head back home without playing. So we wish best of luck to Pakistan cricket team.

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