Quack! Online

THE WEBMASTERS student committee of National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences (FAST), Karachi campus, cordially invites you to DIGITALeyez, the inaugural digital-media centric event of NUCES FAST. It is scheduled to take place on the 12th of April, 2008. DIGITALeyez offers the following competitions:

1. Photography
2. Short Film & Animation
3. Web Design
4. Xpressions (Skethcing & Painting)
5. Brainiac (Quiz)
6. Young Acheivers (TV program)

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Rule: Did you know the new TIP student’s handbook says that you cannot use your iron in your hostel room without prior written permission from the warden?

Workaround: Make a point of asking everytime you see the warden. Even if you are not going to use it, just ask, just in case you do use it. Send an email to him, and CC it to a few of the faculty members too. Send an email every day, ask all the time, ask the guards to ask him. Ask him in writing, ask him over the phone, ask him now and always, for you never know, when you need to iron. Read the rest of this entry »

We can all sense it, hear it, heck, even smell it in the air! Smoky wisps of rebellion slowly rising from the apparently bubbling hot insides of the Kingdom of far, far away, called TIP.

Can’t you see the signs? They are all around us. First, the 2006 freshmen ragging videos that were banned along with the ragging itself, get leaked out and made available to all and sundry from the TIP’s computer lab. They have made their way on to the internet, one hears from gossipping voices in the corridors and whispers from behind the library cubicles. This is just one of the many examples.

Students who would shush others who complained of mismanagement, and bad, student-unfriendly policy galore, seem to have changed their minds as well. They can now be seen voicing their opinions/complains out real loud.

What exactly is happening, one wonders…and wonders some more! Could it be frustration and a mixture of disturbed emotions that had been building inside students’ minds since long, and is finally coming out in form of unintentional, but inevitable mutiny, or is it something intentional that will lead to a positive or negative revolution? That only time will tell.

It’s been a month and a half and an email sent on a public invitation for feedback by the IT Manager has yet to receive a due reply. Quack! found out the the IT Team thought the email unwarranted, and thus did not require any acknowledgement or reply. Also, they are too busy. Thus, we decided to reply on their behalf.

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On a public invitiation for feedback by the IT Manager, the following email was sent to him on February 22, 2006. Approximately 20 hours later, our hard-working, computer-savvy, email-wizard IT Manager has yet to reply. Quack! readers are invited to add their questions to those in the email below and we’ll update you on any reply.

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Abid Omar
Date: Feb 22, 2006 8:41 PM
Subject: Feedback
To: itmanager@tip.edu.pk

Dear Mr. IT Manager,

You have put up a notice on the notice-boards asking for feedback and suggestions to the computer lab. As a concerned student, I’m wondering:

1. Why does Windows invite me on a product tour every time I log in?
2. Why are “language tools” enabled all the time and using up valuable computing resources?
3. Why does MS Office require me to enter my name every time I open it? I though computers were smart enough to remember this kind of stuff.
4. Can’t you put a link to my Z: drive on my desktop? Windows was supposed to make life easier, not harder.
5. Do you really enjoy it when students come up to the window and say: “Print please, print dijiye,” and you smartly respond by asking where, to be met with the even smarter reply “Two thousand and three, Zero Six Eight Nine, folder Akhaq, subfolder TEXT 176 Textile Science, file Assignment No2.DOC, print pages 3 and seven.” Talk about red-tape.
6. Why is your internet connection such rubbish?

Kind regards

Abid Omar

After lot of blessings of students 30 branded P4`s were brought in the premise of Textile Institute of Pakistan. How glad we were, But Wait.!! where those HI_FI sytems (including four P4 systems in end user lab) escaped?? The answer of this wierd quetion I found out from a freshmen that “those state of the art systems are decorated in the “Teaching Lab” of Textile Institute of Pakistan “.

Isn`t it ironic to know that only 15 systems (most of them are entirely outdated)are available for 350 students, & those HI_FI systems are laying eggs in the “Teaching lab”.Where they are used just for Microsoft Word & Excel.

During the Peak timing, the end user lab is indicatitng the picture of fish market, where students sit on the Cabins; wait for their turns.

I request the management to please do something about it, because its annoying the students more than anything else.