Category: IT
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Promise of AI ChatGPT, Chatbots: How much Truth or Falsehood or Marketing Hype
All the information that chat gpt is providing was already on internet and Google. What chatgpt has done is to provide this info using conversation models that select the most important and the most relevant pieces of information that answer your questions by removing the clutter, redundancy, and keeping the answer within the scope of…
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Technology is as good as the people using it: EVM Technology is just a tool. Its user determines the quality of output
Installing cameras for fighting crime and tax evasion, using computer technology for removing corruption, and implementing EVMs for ensuring transparency of election results are all uses of technology to solve problems. However, “technology is as good as the people using it”. Utility of a technology is dependent on the ability and competence of people using…
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EVMs will fail in Pakistan because it is more of a management problem than a technology problem
EVM is a much bigger logistics & management problem than a technology problem!Assuming EVMs are technologically feasible, now please work out the logistics and management issues of manufacturing, testing, transportation, storage, issuance, receipts, returns, installation, post installation testing, quality assurance, maintenance, malfunction detection, repair, supervision etc of uniquely numbered 7 lac devices. Mind you, that…
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Murphy’s Law and Project Leadership during Change Implementations
Whenever we use technology, we should always do a pilot. Do you recall IBA’s entry test fiasco of medical colleges of Punjab in late 1990s which was widely covered in the media of that time? I saw the fiasco unfolding in front of my eyes from close at IBA where the untested scanner was put…
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How Correct is My Data-Cardinal Rules for Data Collection
How Correct is My Data: Cardinal Rules for Data Collection Written: May 2, 2007 A marketing manager of a pharmaceutical who has recently joined the company is looking at a report lying on his table about the performance of the sales representatives, their individual targets and the actual achievements. He needs to know what is…
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Senator Mazhar Ali – Dreams and Achievements
Sen Syed Mazhar Ali was a man who was ahead of his time. He was a visionary who could appreciate the role of IT in creating wonderful opportunities for Pakistan in 1980s. His apartment complexes set the standard for high quality during 1970s and early 1980s. His Gulshan-e-Maymar town was conceived and constructed decades ahead…
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Power of Word in Value Based Education: Discriminating Truth from Falsehood
Honorable Prime Minister, Group Chairperson City School, dignitaries, educationists, teachers and my dear students. I thank the organizers for giving me the opportunity to speak about value based education, some thing that is near and dear to my heart. Power of Word emanates from the depth of our feelings. Words are only words unless they…
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How Mina Stampede Happened and How to Avoid it: Hajjis Traffic Management System:
During my hajj of 1996, we were in a segment of road in approximately the same area where Mina 2015 stampede occurred. We experienced how a stampede-like situation begins to build as hajjis begin thronging towards jumaraat. I can still feel the tension developing in the air, the silence of lull before the storm, the panic on the faces of the…
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Computer Revolution and Moore’s Law: A Personal Journey
Moore’s Law: Exponential increase in transistor density and speed In this post I trace a personal journey of my interactions with the evolutionary stages of computational machines. I feel my decisions in life have been shaped by forces which were not as clearly understood or even visible in the 1970s and 1980s as they are…
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Big Data, Management Transformation and Voyager of Star Trek Movie
V’jer of Star Trek The growth of digitization and computerization and its assimilation of everything and everyone that it touches reminds me of the first Start Trek – Movie, where the enterprise encounters a huge energy cloud that is devouring extra-terrestrial objects and even planets on its path as it moves towards the solar system and…
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Changing Role of CIO
Changing Role of CIO Presented at the CIO Summit, May 21-22, 2013, DHA Golf Club Convention Center, Karachi. (Presentation pdf) We know that we have transited from the industrial age in to the information age. We can put the date of this transition formally to the start of internet revolution in the mid 1990s. What is…
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Why are there no IT companies with more than 10,000 employees
Why are there no IT companies with more than 10,000 employees In a speech made by Dr. Ishrat Husain, Dean IBA at the CIO Summit on May 21, 2013, he asked the question why is it that we do not have in Pakistan any IT company similar to WIPRO or InfoSys of India. We do…
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Beauty is Our Business – Mathematics, Excellence and the Great Dijkstra
I remember here the lessons Dijkstra gave about beauty and excellence through personal examples. His colleagues celebrated his works with the salute: “Beauty is Our Business”[1]. Dijkstra is one of the most revered computer scientist whose footprint on the fundamental ideas in computer science is now legendary. This was 1988-89. I was at The University…