From the Desk of Asif Nawaz

Folks,

If you’re receiving spam from my domain, some dingbat monkey is spoofing it. I’ve done all I can at this end to discourage it. Next step is to try and set up an SPF record, and that can do something, but I doubt if that’s going happen, or if it will do much good.

It’s not me, and I’m not trying to sell anyone viagra. So everyone just calm down.

Asif.

So I happen to have an HP 2120us Windows XP Media Center Edition Laptop that is Vista Compatible. I also happen to be a Microsoft Partner, so with the release of Windows Vista, I got a copy of Windows Vista Business to try out and play with before I start advising my clients on it. Now I have used Windows Vista Ultimate before in another Microsoft Partner pack, and I was pretty happy with that version despite the fact that it was beta. Windows Business doesn’t fall much short; it covers all the features except for some media add-ons here and there, which would useful primarily for a technology enhanced Western household. Anything east of the UK, and people wouldn’t really understand the benefits of some of the features offered by Windows Vista Ultimate.

For all people who are considering upgrading their HP Laptops to Vista though, there may be several minor issues. HP provides drivers for all the hardware, but most of the not-so-useful software that HP bundled with their Media Center Edition pre-Install can also be found on the web. But one of their most useful inventions, HP Quickplay, is not available once you upgrade from Windows XP to Windowss Vista. Now the Pavillion dv Edition laptops are configured for HP Quickplay, and they have a Quickplay button on them; it’s just really weird having the button on there but no Quickplay itself.

I’ve gotten a hold of HP Customer support, I’ve searched all over the web, and HP Quickplay is hard to come by. HP Customer service flat out said that Quickplay is not available UNLESS you simply recover yur original OS and it’s complied into that installation. If you upgrade, you will be unable to take advantage of HP Quickplay, and apparently, HP has no intention of offering the software standalone in the future. Now, I’m an HP laptop kind of a guy, but this move on HP’s part is absolutely ridiculous.Â

This further complicates things for people with HP Laptops and Windows Vista, because unless you’re upgrading to Windows Vista Ultimate Edition, you’re not going to have any DVD reading or writing codecs, and who wants to pay for those, again, when you already paid for them as part of your original laptop purchase.

How to go by this issue; you can try and put your recovery hard drive partition on your laptop onto CDs, because once you’ve installed Vista, you can see the recovery partition, but you can’t access it (I haven’t tried figuring this one out yet, it probably has something to do with NTFS and FAT32). Then you can try installing some of the software from your recovery drive. It may or may not work. The point is that HP’s service in the matter is currently poor, and I’m not sure they plan on changing that unless you buy a laptop which comes pre-installed with Vista.

Haha, this is just awesome! And look @ the reason for the ticket!

Again, courtesy of reuters reproduced from MSNBC.com at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17215376/.
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Couple snarls travel on major highway

Updated: 5:40 p.m. ET Feb. 18, 2007
JERUSALEM - Israeli police investigating why a car was blocking traffic in the fast lane of a major highway on Sunday found a couple inside having sex. A police spokesman said the female driver and her male passenger gave in to their passions without pulling over to the side of the road, causing congestion and leaving other motorists having to swerve to dodge their stationary vehicle. A patrolman gave the woman a ticket for holding up traffic.

Copyright 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.

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Coldstone Creamery. A medium size cup with a scoop each of cheesecake and coconut icecream, mixed with graham crust and caramel, topped with pecans and walnuts. Yum!

On http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17197748/,

Updated: 4:12 a.m. ET Feb. 17, 2007Â

QUETTA, Pakistan - A judge and six lawyers were among 15 people killed in a suspected suicide bomb attack on a courtroom in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta on Saturday, the city’s police chief said. The bomb exploded while the court was in session and a senior judge and six lawyers were among those killed, police said. At last 25 people were injured and police chief Rahu Khan Brohi told Reuters six of them were in a critical condition.

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Will you look at that! Reuters is thankful that 25 people died. By the way, Reuters, not MSN has provided the article. I just saw it on MSN.com.Â

Gallery Integration on the Site is complete.

You now view the photos directly from http://photos.asifism.com.

New pictures and albums are being added. Have fun!

Â

The “As-If-Ism” installation was introduced to viewers on a wall covered with Plexiglas printed with a black bold face explanation. The text was punctuated with donut shaped circles presented in groups of three, occupying the leading of every third row of text. These donuts were reminiscent of over-sized washers or O-rings but are actually the flat metal base of a faucet. These circular images interjected a technological overtone into her futuristic psychological explorations. In more recent installations faucets and neon lights, representing water, have been added. When Granite first used the word “As-If-Ism” during our conversation, I had not yet seen the printed text. As our conversation was largely conducted in Hebrew, I was convinced that I was encountering unknown vocabulary. Spoken in her thick Israeli accent with the s’s sounding like strong z’s it took several repetitions before I was able to deconstruct “AsIf-Ism” back into its English word parts.

As-If-Ism is best explained by her own written descriptions of the installation. Her statement functions as a parody of social forecasting; its satiric edge leads to thought-provoking realizations.

Asifism: The institute of progressive psychology in conjunction with the Divinity school was formed by the Vaihinger group, in the spring of 2010. Asifism is the study of a person’s subjective perception of the reality surrounding him, and how he arranges this system of beliefs into a story frame of reference. He may intentionally construct fictions, that he knows are false. Asifism is a solution to unsolvable problems… [the exhibit] tells the story of a new school of Psychology which is formed as a response to the take-over of mental health by the big health insurance companies and the domination of neuro-science in human behavior research. It is the only remaining school which offers an exclusively non-pharmaceutical treatment. In order to survive financially and ideologically the school is merged with a Divinity School. The primary form of intervention, in this school of thought, is the reading and reinterpretation of sacred texts.

This was reproduced from here:Â http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-76026455.html.

The government of Karachi has recently launched a portal @ http://www.karachicity.gov.pk to keep the citizens of Karachi up to date on the latest development in the city (that almost sounds like a joke). Although I have to give them a thumbs up for creating a channel to pass information to the public, it would really help if the actually worked on developing the city. I mean, when do these monkeys who are running the construction contracts citywide plan to close up the ditches alongside every road in the city? When do you plan to implement traffic rules? Wait, wrong question! Do you have a plan? Do you have a plan to implement that plan, and do you eventually have a schedule for the implementation. Please, disclosure is not needed; development is.

I’ve begun work on this site. If any designers are interested in being featured on the site or writing lessons on pottery for the learners’ section on the site, please get in touch with me.

Welcome to Pakistan. Need I say more?