Octopus Paul is a Star... But Bad-Grammar is even more interesting...

Ever since those correct predictions made by that eight-armed mollusk created a hype during this FIFA 2010 World Cup, octopus Paul has become a kind of pop icon.

Coming to Facebook, the presence of Paul can be seen in the form of many third-party applications.
Let me share two of my observations as screen-shots.

See this:

Just check the Grammar of the developers...
"What did Octopus Paul predicted for you?" should be "What did Octopus Paul predict for you?"
Hey guys... You're making an application for the public, and what kind of impression you're making here. What you're doing is not even a slang.

I checked another application, and still, you can see the weak grammar. "an Octopus" is written as "a Octopus". And then "asked" is termed as "asked to".
"David asked to a Octopus Paul:" is certainly something that's hardly English. One cannot expect that the team of application developers overlooked it and no one noticed it.

And here's the interesting part, where the Paul answers your questions, and see what my friend has asked:

Shuja asked to a Octopus Paul:
octopus paul kamina kutta haina? [Don't you think Octopus Paul is a mean dog?]


And the answer was: Always the same. The answer is YES!

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Interesting Text Message responses after Facebook Ban

After Facebook was blocked in Pakistan, I received a really interesting text message from a friend. That text message has a line mimicking Facebook's notification like:
"So and so has tagged a photo of you".
Below that, there was a picture of donkey drawn in ASCII characters.

I shared it with few of my friends to see how they get it during that time. I received quite different types of responses. I'm posting few of them here.

That's the text message I sent:

Knonie Dost has tagged a photo of you...

 (\./)
 /.".)"^----;";_
 \,,/"( ,     ,   ) \
       //\\ //\\

:-P

Few of the responses are listed below. I have changed the real names to initials for privacy reasons.

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Mannan likes this

[- Mannan Saddique]

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Shooo cuteeee
:-*

[- Maanie, "Imran Khalid"]

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Hahaha. today i was dicusng u wid ur x-collegue "A.R". dat nw knonie has limitd social life wid out facebok.

[- Abdul Basit]

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Hello! Knonie dost.

[- Hadi Raza]

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Not allowed. Site restricted. [...]

[- Hasnat Mehmood]

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Haha yeah, that looks like me.
"S. A" likes your photo. :-P

[- S. A]

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Hehe :-D
Thank you Knonie Dost.
Like*.

[- Sharjeel Butt]

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Lol =p funny =p

[- C. Ch]

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Fahad Naeem has tagged a photo of you.

(\./)
/.".)"^----;";_
\,,/"( , , ) \
//\\ //\\

6 Comments:

*)Hahahaha bohat aala...
*)awsum
*)haha lolz..
*)nice.
*) fitt pic hy
*) yaar ye kb ki hay?

lets show them we dnt need any facebook we hav our own! ;-)

[- Fahad Naeem, Also by Bilal Asad]

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Oh no. Knonie yai kia. Buri baat friends ko aisa Nahi kehtay! But fact remains the same and that is I Love u! Have a great weekend...my balance finished talk to u later!

[- Bilal Nasr]

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Hahahaha!

[- Saad Omer]

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Hahaha, never thought of facebook mobile! :-D

[- Ismail Tariq]

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Hahahahaha missing fb? :P

[- Malik Sarmad]

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So cute :D

[- Bilal Hussayn Asad]

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"S. Z" commented on her photo:
:)

[- S Z]

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Ye Tumne kab se anmol moti send kerna start kr diay.. :P

[- Ghayyur Jadoon]

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Are u against fb being banned in pak !?

[- Hamzah Jamil]

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Facebook itna yaad araha hai kya :p

[- Ahmed Faraz]

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Yet another Desi Facebook... Some painful observations

Recently, I came across another replica of Facebook, apart from PakFacebook, called MillatFacebook.

While visiting it, I got some interesting observations that I'm sharing here.

In fact, all these desi replicas of Facebook remind me of the advertisement techniques where some issue, usually, religiously oriented, is highlighted and people are told that we should not use these foreign things, and we MUST switch to our local cloned versions of these products. These local brands cash the situation and try to gather customers. Sometimes it's the entire America that we should boycott, and we should not drink Coke/Pepsi, and then there are those ill-tasted Amrat-Cola, that usually highlighted that religious part somewhere in their slogans and ad-compaigns.

Coming to MillatFacebook, I wonder why any social networking site specially for Muslims need to have the word Facebook in it?

Why "Pak Facebook" and "Millat Facebook", that now I'm expecting some "Watan Facebook", "Mulk Facebook", "Islam Facebook", etc. Can't they even come up with any title without the word Facebook in it? And then, this same Blue color, almost same interface and more or less same features, means, no creativity... That in fact depicts an overall slave-mind.

Here's the screen-shot of the very first welcome screen. [Click to enlarge]

And the welcome message reads:

"MillatFacebook helps you connect and share with more than 1.57 Billion Muslims and Sweet people from other Religions."

So, they say they are providing a platform for connecting more than 1.57 Billion Muslims, as if they actually have this many members.

And after logging in, we can see a Notice in BOLD, as seen in the screen-shot. [Click to enlarge]

The very first line of this notice says:

Dear Bother/Sister, !! CONGRATULATIONS & Salam to all: Over 70,000 Muslims already united as One Millat/Ummah at MFB.

Wow, so they say they already have 70,000 members... But what a marketing technique.

Upon browsing, it's revealed that in fact they don't have this much real members, perhaps not even a 1000, and they might have used some programming techniques to show some users from all over the world, with no data, but only names.

Then, the next part of that notice says that "We are doing a server upgrade to ensure high speed..."

So, a site serving so many users need to take "48 hours" to upgrade, and they don't even have some backup or temporary alternative server?

Then, upon further researching about the domain name, i.e. millatfacebook.com, I found out that it is registered on 20th May, 2010.

Here's a screen-shot of these records:

Now, we know that due to that [so-called] Anti-Islamic issue, planned to be held on 20th May, [as discussed here], Facebook was blocked in Pakistan from 19th May onwards. That was, in fact the best time to launch a new site, because Facebook is not accessible in Pakistan. So, they might have come up with the idea and created this site. And here, they are claiming to have 70,000 members from all over the world. In only 10 days, they got so many "members"... It's quite hard for me to digest, especially when the site has a borrowed name, features, and such worse quality of service.

I took these screen-shots in the afternoon, and now, at night, while I visited this site, they are DOWN.

And just look at the quality of the Notice this page is displaying, image below: [Click to enlarge]

And what a surprise for me, now they decided to even increase the number of their members in this new notice, as it reads:

"Dear Brother/Sister, !! CONGRATULATIONS & Salam to all
Almost 90,000 Muslims already United as One Millat/Ummah at MFB."

So, during a span of few hours, they got 20,000 [Twenty thousand] more members, even while their site is temporary down for upgrading.

My idea here is not to discourage or humiliate anyone but why people use Religion as a tool, and then, why they tell such blunt lies in the name of Religion? I'm not aware of any Religion that encourages deceiving your fellows.

I appreciate their efforts, and perhaps, according to them, they are serving and saving the respect and integrity of Muslims by doing all this.

May God give us the vision to see things clearly!

Amen!

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The other side of blocking Facebook in Pakistan

It's been around a week since Facebook is blocked by official orders in Pakistan.

Here are few of my personal observations and ideas regarding this important decision that created a sort of change in our life-styles.

What is Facebook? Of course, a social networking site.

There are so many other websites, some ever better, less fussy, and even older and more mature than Facebook, but it is considered one of the top sites among other social networking site. Almost everyone has a profile there. Every Local TV channels, brands, local/international celebrities, hobbyists, etc. have their fan pages there. It's an age of Technology, and it's practically impossible to meet and interact with so many friends and acquaintances all the time, so we need a platform to enjoy our social lives in this virtual world.

Making a Fan-page or Group on Facebook is easy. You just need to come up with some topic, and create a group, and then you can invite you friends and that's how the members in a group grow. For that reason, so many pages/groups are created just to be different and then to attract more fans. Then, there's a feature of "Report" with every group, that if some content is against Facebook's policies, people can report it to Facebook management and then they can review it and take action, if applicable. According to their rules, hateful contents, violence, racism, anti-religion, nudity, etc, [All the basic "Morality" topics] are not allowed.

Someone there created a page that started this issue.

A lady came up with an idea that the members should be asked to draw/illustrate the Holy Prophet of Muslims and post them on 20th May, 2010. That page was titled something like "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day". People with like minds started joining it and the members grew.

In Muslim's religious teachings, it's forbidden to draw and depict the faces of Prophets, out of respect and to differentiate from Idolatry. Muslims certainly do not appreciate things like these, especially when their most beloved religious personality is not respected the way he deserved. Creation and mention of this Facebook page created a reaction against it.

First it was a privately created group, and some people joined it. Some Muslim came to know about it and they, for spreading awareness, or for condemning it, joined or shared its link to their other fellows. And then this network started growing. Muslims started sharing this group, and then this personal group, that could have been ignored earlier became to obvious to ignore. That private underground activity took the form of a serious Global Event. Then, others created groups against that page, and then Facebook feed was filled with so many condemning groups. Then many people reported that group but Facebook admin didn't delete it promptly. Many people didn't consider that it's a commercial age and others only go for things someone advertises. There are thousands of Anti-religion sites over the internet, but does anyone protest against them? No, because no one bothers to go there and share its link to anyone. If everyone has adapted this behavior in the start, that reaction could have been minimized. 

Then a point comes that why should Muslims allow anyone to humiliate their personalities like this? Why should they ignore the activities against their religion? But, on the other hand, why should Muslims give much importance to someone who's not ready to accept them? If someone hates your ideas, let them stay in that hatred, while you gather the facts and choose some constructive way to give your peaceful message. If someone doesn't know about your Prophet, and believes only few misconceptions, then you can also invite them and introduce them to that Personality. The respect and position of your Ideal Personalities cannot be tarnished by creation of any Facebook groups. You simple cannot make everyone around to respect and believe what you do. Some people do make fun of you, just like you make fun of others.

In a situation like this when the offensive content is hidden, and you need to search for it specially to view it, otherwise, it doesn't hurt, why take the pain and look for things all over the internet to see if there's something that we don't like? And then, cutting the entire country from using internet isn't a solution. Personally, I do not accept the decision of blocking this entire website along with around 800 other websites, because that is such a weak and impractical solution in the long run. I'll write about this, and some more possible solutions in my next blog.

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Facebook Blocked on Orders of Lahore High Court

Dear Valued Customer,

Micronet has blocked access to www.facebook.com
in compliance with orders of Lahore High Court passed today.
Facebook has been holding a competition to draw caricatures
of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) and has not removed the
objectionable hate materials despite thousands of emails
from Pakistani facebook community.

This access would remain block till 31 May 2010 or further
orders by the Lahore High Court.

Best Regards

Manager
Technical Assistance Center
Micronet Broadband Pvt. Ltd.
Islamabad

[That is the email notification I received from my ISP, Micronet]
So that's the first time Facebook has been blocked in Pakistan.

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