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.

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

Allah's Name on Meat

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

My Fedora 9 Desktop

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.

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".

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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==