My Chronicles...

04/12: Corruption - A Democratic Right?

I am not a big fan of the current Pakistani style of dictatorial democracy. A Minister from the ruling political party of the government, the Pakistan People's Party, recently stated that "Corruption is our right!" on a live TV program. Watch the video here: Corruption Is Our Right: PPP Minister.

Is it just me who thinks that supporting such a "democratic setup" which feels that corruption is its God given right is rather pointless? Or is it just reward for the Pakistani people to have such a government which deems corruption its right? After all, it was these very people who voted this government in through pity votes due to Benazir Bhutto's death.

And the final question which this leads to is: Is democracy a viable system of governance for Pakistan and its people? It hasn't worked for Pakistan in the past 60+ years. Do we have the luxury of time to wait another 60 years hoping that it works for us?

21/10: Worth of a democracy...

Two suicide bomb blasts recently occurred at the International Islamic University campus in H-9, Islamabad. One of them was in the women campus cafeteria which resulted in loss of innocent lives and some damage to the university campus.

It is a sad incident and the reprehensible acts of the terrorists should be condemned. It was a time of mourning for the losses incurred. However, as is usual, the interior minister Rehman Malik paraded in with his entourage for his usual media whoring. The students protested against his very presence and showed deep anger over the failure of the democratically elected government. A video of this incident can be seen here (highly recommended!). As a common citizen of Pakistan, I fully agree with the sentiments expressed within the video by the students and Talat Hussain, as they relate to government officials.The widening disconnect between the rulers and the ruled reflects the ever widening difference in perceptions of the aforementioned parties.

I, for one, fail to see the benefit of democracy judging by the performance of the PPP led government since the elections. This government is the epitome of leadership failure, irresponsibility, lack of political savviness and utter disregard for public sentiments and aspirations.To put it forth plain and simple, former President Musharraf's quasi-democracy era was far better than this failed democracy because ultimately, the people and the country's progress matter far more than the imposition of a supposedly better political system just for the sake of the system itself. While the Pakistani media presents a differing point of view, the Pakistani public is becoming increasingly disenfranchised with democracy as a workable system.

The question which arises is this: How long will we keep dragging this democratic wreck with us?

20/09: Eid Mubarak!

Ramadan is about to end (has already ended for some) and I would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a very happy Eid. May Allah bless us all with his bounties and make us better Muslims. Amen.


Spread as much love, peace, joy and prosperity as you can on this day of celebration.

For reading more Eid posts, click here.

Images taken randomly from Google image search.

14/08: Happy Independence Day!

14th August is finally here! Let's come and celebrate this day together with the vision to do everything to bring to reality the vision of Muhammad Ali Jinnah with regards to Pakistan to make it a nation standing for equality and prosperity. May Allah (SAW) help us with this vision.

04/03: Seagate 7200.12 ST3500418AS HDD (500GB) benchmark

I got this disk today and was doing some benchmarks. I thought I should put these here for general information on the drive's performance.

It is a Seagate 7200.12 ST3500418AS drive with 16MB cache (compared to 32MB on 500GB 7200.11 model) on nVidia nForce 4 SATA controller. Previously, the ST3500418AS drives were detected as ST3500410AS but this one is detected as ST3500418AS, just like the sticker on the top says. That's a relief! Internet forums are filled with talk about ST3500418AS being detected as ST3500410AS.

There has been a lot of talk about firmware issues with the 7200.11 series of Seagate's drives. The issue resulted in the drive suddenly dying without any reason. The 7200.12 series hasn't had any similar firmware issues reported as yet. For all intents and purpose, these drives are impervious to he firmware issues plaguing the 7200.11 series hard disk drives.

Anyway, enough talk... The read and write benchmarks by HD Tune Pro are given below. Click on the thumbnails to see the full image for either benchmark.





This disk has an average transfer rate of above 100MB/s for both reading and writing! I reckon two or more of these disks in RAID configuration (mirroring) will work beautifully.

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