Thursday, November 27, 2008

Bangladesh Population Reaches 16.13 Crore (161.3 Million)

This is an email I got in bdresearchers group:


Bangladesh population reaches 16.13 crore ( 160. Million ) : UNFPA report
...population with the present growth rate will reach 25.41 crore ( 250. 4 million ) in 2050

The population of Bangladesh has reached 16.13 crore marking a 1.7 per cent growth in the last one year, according to the latest global population report released by the United Nations Population Fund in Dhaka on Wednesday.

The Bangladesh population with the present growth rate will reach 25.41 crore in 2050, says the report, released simultaneously in other countries of the world. The country's population in 2007 was 14.71 crore.

The total fertility rate has, however, decreased to 2.81 in 2008 compared to 2.98 in 2007, says the report.

It said the per capita gross national income dropped to $1,230 in 2008 from $2090 in 2007. The GNI of Bangladesh lies far below than other countries of the subcontinent like India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka where the per capita income is $4,000, $2,410 and $3,730 respectively. The Bangladesh's GNI is slightly better than Nepal where it is $1,010.

Unveiling the report on the State of World Population 2008 at the National Press Club, UNFPA acting representative Pornchai Suchitta said this yearο's report was focused on culture, gender and human rights.

This year is the 60th anniversary of Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the report calls for culturally sensitive approaches to development, promote human rights in general and women rights in particular, he said.

Gender inequality remains widespread and deep-rooted in many cultures and the report calls for action to increase cultural knowledge, Pornchai added. Men are primary decision makers about child bearing, contraceptive use while women themselves have no power to decide issues of their reproductive health, the UNFPA official said.

He said the denial of womenο's right to take decision on reproductive life along with malnutrition, early marriage and violence are the reasons of incredibly high population growth, maternal mortality and child mortality and key impediments to achieve the millennium development goals.

It is a striking fact that women and girls are three fifths of the worldο's one billion poorest people, women are two thirds of 960 million adults who cannot read and girls are 70 per cent of the 130 million children who are out of school, he said portraying the global situation.

The UNFPA executive, quoting the report, said cultural constraints rather than poverty held women back from using family planning and programmes could succeed even if there had been little economic development.

In Bangladesh, some laws are not women friendly and therefore they do not enjoy equal rights to marriage, divorce, guardianship and inheritance although the constitution provides equal rights to men and women in public life, he observed.

Despite Bangladeshο's commitment to the Beijing platform for action to enact and periodically review domestic legislation to punish and redress violence against women in the home, workplace, community and society, very little is progressed in amending discriminatory laws and some of the provision of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, he said.

In all stages of life, women suffer from malnutrition more than men and lack access to healthcare, the UNFPA executive said. The UNFPA is committed to contribute towards achieving the goals of international conference on population and development and the millennium development goals.

Other demographic, social and economic indicators of the report show that the energy consumption per capita is very much low in Bangladesh, which is 158 units compared to 491, 490, 338 and 477 units respectively in India, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

Additional director general of health services Hosne Ara Tahmin and UNFPA's programme officers Noor Mohammad and Mozaharul Islam Khan were also present.


Friday, October 10, 2008

Bangladesh vs New Zealand ODI on the 9th OCT 2008: Bangladesh Batting Highlights

After New Zealand made 201 for 9 in 50 overs, Bangladesh emphatically won the match by 7 wickets. Here is the highlights of the magnificent batting by Bangladesh:

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Economic Incentive for Preserving Rainforests

Guyana's president Bharrat Jagdeo has put forward an excellent proposal to preserve world's rainforests in 2006. BBC has published to proposal here.

Monday, September 08, 2008

Interesting idea to fight global warming

Scientist John Latham has proposed an interesting idea to counter the climate change here. He proposed to increase low-lying clouds above the oceans. These clouds play an instrumental role to reflect radiation back to the space. To create these clouds artificially, 1500 ships are needed. These ships will be powered by wind which is good to know. However, each of these ships will cost £1m to £2m.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

World View of Global Warming

World View of Global Warming summarizes effects of global warming to some areas in the globe including Bangladesh here. It says that the predicted one meter sea level rise at the end of the century will inundate more than 15 percent of Bangladesh.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Arctic Ice Chunk Breaks Away

About 20 square kilometers of ice has broken away from the Ward Hunt shelf of Canada. The ice chunk used to reflect energy from Sun to space. The split is likely to increase earth's warming rate.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7532435.stm

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Allah's Name on Meat

A man in a restaurant in Nigeria found the following meat when he went there to dine:

mysterymeat

The meat has names of Allah and the prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him).

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7520149.stm

Friday, June 27, 2008

Windows Live Writer

Zippy Zed introduced this nice tool here and I decided to try it immediately. I was looking for something like this for a long time. I have blogs in Blogger and Wordpress and I wanted to have a tool by which I can post to both of them simultaneously. I tried at least one such tool before but was disappointed. I could not even connect to my Wordpress blog. But Windows Live Writer makes it so easy! Using the tool is very easy. It needs only one click to publish. To publish to more than one blog, you have to switch current blog but the text in the editing area does not get lost. Then you have to click the publish button again. The only downside I found so far is the installation process. It took longer than I expected. But considering installation a one time process, I would certainly recommend it to anyone who want to edit blog posts offline and/or want to post to multiple blogs. This is a good job done by Microsoft.

North Pole Could be Ice-Free This Summer

Robert Roy Britt has reported in Live Science that north pole could be ice-free this summer. It seems that we are going to see changes caused by global warming much sooner than expected. Only twenty years ago people used to disbelieve the idea of global warming. But it has become a reality much quicker than what believers used to think. Global warming will erode world shore lines much faster than now in coming decades. The most severe victim of this phenomenon will be countries like Bangladesh. In fact, though sounds unbelievable when heard first time, Bangladesh will be drowned in less than a century if no immediate effective action against global warming is taken. As I told in a previous post, the people of Bangladesh are not responsible for that. Why should they bear the brunt of something they did not cause? I think world leaders should immediately pay their attention to this disaster mankind will be facing. They should not limit their actions to promises only, they should deliver on them. Lets not make any more delay.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

NASA warming scientist: 'This is the last chance'

A prominent NASA scientist is still hopeful about the possibility of avoiding the worst of global warming. But he calls for action immediately to which very few people are lending ears. Here is the news: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080623/ap_on_sc/sci_warming_scientist

Bangladesh: Ground Zero of Global Warming

Bangladesh is a country under severe threat from global warming. Scientists and climate experts are expressing their concerns for Bangladesh for quite a long time now. While visiting the country, the U.N.Secretary General. Kofi Annan has warned the world about it. But nobody seems to care. I think very few Bangladeshis are aware of the fact that most of Bangladesh are set to disappear from the world map within a century. Though they are no one to blame for the cause, they are the innocent victims of some of the things people doing to lead luxurious life in other parts of the world. Renowned British journalist Johann Hari wrote an excellent article on the issue. In the article, Dr Atiq Rahman, a climate scientist, rightfully called Bangladesh the Ground Zero of Global Warming. He said, "My best understanding of the evidence is that this will probably happen towards the end of the lifetime of babies born today." So, the issue is not of far future. The new generation being born today will face this daunting problem. It is our duty to start thinking about it right now. I can not accept that my beloved country will cease to physically exist one day. We have to start looking for the solution. And it is also the moral duty of the nations who are responsible for this to prevent this from happening by any possible means.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

A just step which was long due

Government has sued Niko for Tk 746cr over Tengratilla loss. In U.S. dollars, this is $108,786,005.024 in today's exchange rate. This was due a long time ago. But corrupt politicians did not let it happen as they had their stakes involved with Niko. Because of a conflict of their interest a minister of previous government was fired. Then we came to know that Niko has given him a luxurious SUV. This is just tip of the iceberg. Who knows whether we will ever know the amount of total kickback. My congratulations to the government for taking this bold step.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Pledge a Firefox 3 download

Pledge a Firefox 3 download here. It is going to be released on June 17, 2008. Mozilla Foundation is trying to set a Guinness record of maximum download in a day. I surely will do two downloads: one for Windows Vista and the other for Fedora 9.

A good article by Motiur Rahman

http://www.prothom-alo.com/index.news.details.php?nid=MTY2NTU=

It is in Bangla.

Friday, June 06, 2008

5 to 7 elections needed for change???

Khandaker Delwar Hossain said today that five to seven general elections are needed to have change in party politics in Bangladesh. In my opinion, either he is mad or he thinks the people of Bangladesh are utter fools. I don't know which one is true but we should be aware of this kind of politicians who are hell bent against any change in the way politics was done in Bangladesh. Given a chance again, they will again form alliance with Razakars and loot the country as before.

Thursday, June 05, 2008

In a democracy people get the government they deserve

Today I searched the net with this "democracy people get what they deserve". These are some of the links I got:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080514193701AAT1Qnh
http://onyxstone.blogspot.com/2007/06/democracy-we-get-what-we-deserve.html
http://www.perspectives.com/forums/view_topic.php?id=171995&forum_id=6&page=2
http://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070403035533AAc38xU

Looks like not everyone agreed on the topic. However, looking at Bangladesh, I think it is true. It is us who elect the corrupt politicians, traitors and god fathers. Then it is also us who blame them for all the wrong. Isn't it us who voted for them? Our democracy is only limited in election. In the first parliamentary session after an election, the opposition boycotts the parliament and makes it defunct until next election. Then they become busy burning cars and buses in the roads. This is how we practice democracy. We also have hard time to have the only element of democracy we have: election. The ruling party does everything to rig the election but when they are in the opposition, they cry for a fair election. I think all these are to blame on us, the people. No matter what these crooked politicians do, we vote them again. That is why it is true that "In a democracy people get the government they deserve".

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Bangladeshi Inventor Has Demonstrated Fuel Free Magnetic Power!

The story can be found here. Giasuddin Kachi invented a generator which needs external energy to start but then on produces energy indefinitely without any need of further external energy. This is too good a story to be true. Some expressed doubts that this machine violates fundamental principles of electricity and energy preservation. Nonetheless, if the generator works who cares! In that case, it will be one of the greatest invention of mankind. All the Bangladeshis will be very very proud of Giasuddin Kachi.

Friday, May 30, 2008

Programming Languages: Current Popular Languages and Future Potential Ones

I found a good article about programming languages. It shows statistics about current popular languages and trends. It discusses in depth why languages like C/C++, Java and C# are popular and widely used. It also discusses potentials of some new languages while criticizes some. The article is worth reading for one who is interested in programming languages.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Bangladesh: A rush to the election, then what?

Here is a good article by GM Solaiman discussing some very important points which people of Bangladesh should mull over. Now that the election is nearing, people are forgetting some things which will return us to the old days of politics. All of the hard work since last year will go in vain if these are not taken care of.

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

A Win32 programmer criticizes Microsoft

Here is a great article doing some criticism of .NET platform which is meant to compete with Java. There is an interesting taxonomy of developers. Reader will also find a short history of windows API development.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Forecast for Big Sea Level Rise

A UK/Finnish team predicted that at the end of this century, sea level will rise between 0.8 to 1.5 meters. How much impact will that have on Bangladesh? According to Steve Nerem from the University of Colorado, 80% to 90% of Bangladesh is within one meter of sea level. Will our politicians stop bickering and focus on these national issues instead?

Monday, April 14, 2008

B.T.T.B.: the corrupt giant of Bangladesh

Some days ago in bdresearchers mail group, I told that the sooner we get rid of B.T.T.B. the better. This institution has caused more harm to our country than any other. Here is one more tale of its misdeed. After all its misdeeds for years after years, it again got complete control of country's only submarine cable on which the future of our prospective IT industry is lying. B.T.T.B. must be obliterated. To be practical, the process has to be gradual but this must start now. Instead of B.T.T.B. we can have a more powerful and larger regulatory body like B.T.R.C. which will monitor the private telecommunication sector and enforce regulations. We should have more open telecommunication policies for land lines and encourage more companies to come forward. In this way, we can ensure much better service for our people than what B.T.T.B. is providing now.

Article on Call Centers in Bangladesh

This is an excellent article by Zakaria Swapan on challenges of establishing call center business in Bangladesh. It is in Bengali.

http://www.prothom-alo.com/mcat.news.details.php?nid=OTM1MDg=&mid=Mw==

Sunday, April 13, 2008

When will we focus on the root of all problems of Bangladesh?

Our biggest problem is not corruption or poverty. Our biggest problem is population growth. As a very small country of the world, we have very limited resources. Our only resource is our fertile land and nothing else. Though our crooked subversive politicians wanted to export gas for personal financial benefit, it is already proven that our gas is not even adequate to meet our needs. Despite of this very limited resources, we are continuing to increase the population at an unacceptable rate. Then we send our finance minister to rich nation to get some alms for us. What a shame! It seems that our duty is to increase the total number of stomachs in our country and other nations of the world has the duty to feed them. We must concentrate on decreasing our population by one/two children per family doctrine like China. Once the proportion of population to resources reaches an acceptable level, corruption and other problems will start to dwindle automatically through economic solvency. Today, apart from the top level robbers of our society, most of the corruption comes from bare necessity. Do we ever think how a government 3rd, 4th class employee can run his family with the mere salary he gets? They are bound to take resort to corruption just to feed their family. Until we continue to ignore our biggest problem, we are not taking a single step forward. With all our efforts we take one step forward but our population growth takes us ten steps back. Yesterday the Daily Prothom-Alo published a news that each year we are adding to our population a staggering 2.5 million people! This was stated by a high government official involved in family planning program. Prothom-Alo published it as an unimportant news. Others did not even bother to mention it. If such negligence continues, I do not understand how we can hope for better days.

Monday, March 31, 2008

An Interview with Bjarne Stroustrup

This is the latest interview of Bjarne Stroustrup. He discusses on several issues. It starts with the history of C++. Then it focuses on features of the upcoming C++0x standard. It ends with a discussion on future of the language. In my opinion, C++ is the best and will remain so for a long time for systems programming. It seems that Bjarne Stroustrup is also aware of that and focusing on incorporating features like multi-threading, file system manipulation etc. to the language standard. It was interesting to know that C++ was used in complex projects like JSF and Mars Rover, though it may not be the only language used.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Apple's eccentric but successful tactics

Apple's Steve Jobs has a different management policy. Though it resembles the ancient old policies, today's silicon valley it looks odd and different. But as long as it is tremendously successful, nobody is going to complaint. Here is where I found an excellent article on it: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-04/bz_apple?currentPage=1. This also discusses all the secrecy practices Apple does. This is a nice article detailing what Apple does to keep everyone guessing what it is coming up with next.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Ship Building Industry: A Potential Sector For the Economy of Bangladesh

Recently, a local ship building company, Ananda Shipyards & Slipways Ltd., has started building quality ships. It is doing great in delivering orders to foreign countries. We never had the shortage for skilled personnel to do it but we lacked entrepreneurship in this area. This company has received orders of worth $200 million recently from Germany, Denmark and Mozambique. This proves that we can build products with high enough quality to enter developed markets. As China and India is making huge money in this industry, I think Bangladesh also has bright prospect. As usual, if we look for help from the government, nothing will happen (a perfect example is IT industry). I hope more entrepreneurs will come forward to follow the example of Ananda Shipyards. The link of the story is here:

http://thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=23974

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Mystery image of Mars


Is that someone walking on the surface of Mars? The image is taken by NASA spacecraft Spirit in 2004. Some says it is garden gnome, some says Virgin Mary. Some says it is the Bigfoot, some says it the Little Mermaid status of Copenhagen. What is your take on it?

Reference: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7205004.stm

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Avoid LAB-Aid Hospital

I just received the following email. I felt that I should share it with all the Bangladeshis. The following is not an exception in Bangladesh. It is happening all the time. I do not know whether there are laws to prevent this kind of negligence or whether people are unaware or afraid of taking help of the laws. But something must be done to stop those greedy guys. They deserve some punishment.


Dear all,

My intuition of sending this e-mail to you is to raise my
voice against LabAid Cardiac Hospital and provide a real
picture about LabAid, so that the LabAid hospital change
their attitude with their future customers.

Please read the attached news paper article which was
published on The Daily Janakantha on 19 Dec, 2007, also,
please see the actual condition of my father while he was
under treatment at LabAid Cardiac Hospital:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnJZIg_x1KI

CAUTION: This video is very graphical!)

The person that you are watching on this video is not in this
world anymore! He died on 11 Nov, 2007 at LabAid Cardiac
Hospital, Dhaka, Bangladesh while treating under Prof.(Dr.)
Baren Chakrabarti, Prof. (Dr.) M. Matiur Rahman (who is
actually not a professor, but using this fancy title) and
Prof. (Dr.) Ali Hossain (the best doctors in our country with
some fancy fake title.!!!).

We trusted the fancy ads of LabAid, also trusted the fancy
titled doctors and nurses. But look at the real picture of
LabAid's CCU Bed No. 8. After the surgery they left my father
on the bed without any proper attention. The LabAid doctors
are so busy to catch another new CCU patient, which they
forget about stitching the surgery area of the current
patient. Look at the blood all over the bed! Look at.. how
clean LabAid's CCU unit is!

I raised my voice when I saw the real picture of LabAid. For
raising my voice I got slapped on my face in front of the all
the people by the LabAid G.M. Mr. Imran Chowdhury.

I am sure LabAid doctors who were involve with my father's
treatment has got a good amount of share from the bill, but
can they really tell that the hospital/or even the doctor's
has done a proper treatment for that helpless guy Mr. A. K.
M. Fazlul Haq (my father)? He was just lying on the CCU Bed
No. 8 helplessly for 15 days and expecting his sons, also the
doctors will take care of him properly. We have done our part
from the bottom of our heart; we were ready to spend all of
our savings and everything to get a proper treatment for our
father, because he is our father who took care of us
properly. But Mr. or Ms. Lab Aid administrators....Have you
guys taken care of my father properly? I am sure you did not,
because I am the one who is one of your victims. How come a
person who didn't even have any heart surgery or any type of
major surgery, but got a bill for 5 and Half lac taka (BD Tk.
5,00, 000.00, AU$8,155.00 , US$7,288.00)???

Dr. Lutfor Rahman (Head of LabAid's Cardiac Hospital) (I am
pointing you because you are the golden son of our country),
do you guys still wanna claim that Heart Surgery is cheaper
in Bangladesh now? On 11 Nov, 2007 when my auntie (Ms.
Sharmin Naaz, Assitt. Commissioner of Taxes, Bangladesh
Govt.) went to see with you regarding my father's bill that
time you mentioned about your contribution in Bangladesh. You
were also talking about you can make 1 lac take in a matter
of second. Well, done Dr. Lutfor Rahman...Well done! We're
really proud of your contribution (?) to our country! Here is
one of your biggest contributions to our country's medical
history which was published on the Daily Janakantha on 19
Dec, 2007 -- ("Lab Aid has become a human killing machine"
The Daily Janakantha, 19 Dec, 2007")

Life is very interesting Dr. Lutfor Rahman! When we lost our
love ones then we feel for it, but then we forget about it.
Instead of forgetting about my father's death, I want to
raise my voice against LabAid Cardiac Hospital and request
all of you to "STOP GOING TO THE LabAID for any heart
treatment" and wanna make those doctors to understand that
they should not play with any humans life, because no matter
how powerful or rich they could be, they will never be able
to give a life back to a dead man's life! So, STOP playing
around with a human life, OKAI Dr. Lutfor Rahman, Prof (Dr.)
Baren Chakraborty, also the others who are involve in this
human killing business!

The LabAid hospital needs to know a little bit about the
power of Internet in disseminating information. I will
request to all of you also do the same (when forwarding the
article, send CC or copies to the lab-aid related addresses,
so that the LabAid individuals feel a little shame every time
they receive a copy of this email).

Here are the email addresses of the LabAid individuals with
their full name:

Prof. (Dr.) Baren Chakraborty -
baren_chakraborty@yahoo.com
Prof (Dr.) Matiur Rahman -
prof.motiur@labaidgroup.com
Dr. Lutfor Rahman - lutfor@labaidgroup.com

cardiacsurgery@labaidgroup.com
prof.jalal@labaidgroup.com
cardiology_lch@labaidgroup.com
admin_lch@labaidgroup.com
marketing_lch@labaidgroup.com
hospitalcoordinator_lch@labaidgroup.com

Thanks for all of your time!

With regards,

M. P. Masum
Sr. Software Engineer
Accenture Australia Ltd.
Wollongong, NSW 2500
Mobile: + 61 401 485 243
e-mail: mpmasum@gmail.com

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Why Java should not be the first programming language to learn?

I found this article "Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?" by Dr. Robert B.K. Dewar and Dr. Edmond Schonberg of New York University to be very interesting. I am in full agreement with these gentlemen in this regard. Actually, I told this to my friends long ago when I saw people are running to Java to avoid pointers of C/C++ and enjoy the ease of using libraries which basically spoon-feed the students. Not learning pointer is a big mistake. Also by learning how to use libraries at the beginning of one's programming career, one cannot grow good skill. Java is very good for rapid, reusable and easily maintainable software development but it must not be the first language to learn.

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Dynastic politics in Pakistan

After the tragic assassination of Banazir Bhutto, Pakistan went to a disarray. The culprits are yet to be found. I do not know much about Benazir Bhutto's past achievements but seeing her courage to try to return democracy to Pakistan and defy threats on her life, I started to admire her. I was amazed to see that she was not provided enough security despite serious attempts and threats on her life. But I am more amazed to see her 19 year old son assuming the power of her party. It is not expected from a country which has so many literate people. Is this what they call democracy? How is her young son qualified as the party leader? What experience does he have? What kind of public support does he have? Was it decided by any voting process inside the party? Is this what they see in countries like U.S.A. and U.K. which are the epitomes of democracy? The irony is, they want to become developed country like them but they keep practicing corruption and all those dynastic crap. I hope my country will not try to follow that. I am afraid that some corrupt people of my country might want to follow example in future. People of my country must resist any such attempt in future.