Month: September 2005

Computer Idee

Cover: Computer IdeeToday, when I got home, I found this big letter stuffed in our mailbox. It was torn on the edges as if someone tried to peek in.
I wasn’t expecting anything, and the technical magazines I usually get come in transparent covers so I didn’t know what this was.

When I opened it, I found a really great surprise.
It was “Computer Idee”, the number one computer magazine in Holland, yep that place they also call The Netherlands, and it was in Dutch.
Hmmm, so why was I so happy about it, especially that I don’t understand one word of the language??

Well, it’s because this issue has a feature about blogs, in which a number of bloggers are profiled. And yes you guessed right, I am one of the bloggers who were interviewed for this feature and profiled in it.

I’ll be scanning the article and putting it up here asap. It’s a shame I don’t have a scanner at home.
I’m truly honoured to be featured in this magazine. I’d like to thank Remko who interviewed me and wrote the feature article again.

100 Dollar Laptops

100 dollar laptop

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology says it will launch a $100 Linux-based laptop prototype this November to help schools in developing countries adopt electronic learning.

The machines will also be targeted at schools in advanced countries that want to greatly boost the number of children who own their own laptop.

MIT expects commercial versions of the machine to start appearing at the end of next year.
MIT plans to unveil its prototype at the World Summit on the Information Society on 17 November in Tunis, Tunisia.

The 500MHz laptop will run a stripped-down version of the Linux operating system.

To overcome the lack of power access in many towns and villages in poor nations, the laptop can be powered either by an AC adaptor or a wind-up mechanism.
The machine will also be ruggedised and Wi-Fi-enabled, and is expected to use an AMD processor.

Governments will be invited to buy the laptops on behalf of schoolchildren.

Now that is so cool…
I wish they do catch on and spread around the world, and that governments encourage them.
It would deal a big blow to Microsoft by producing generations of Linux users, but who cares as long as millions of children around the world have access to computers.

I wonder if I can get one too though, or if I’ll have to bribe one of my young cousins to get one.

Esquire wikis article on Wikipedia

Esquire magazine writer A.J. Jacobs used an interesting and innovative approach to write an article about the freely distributable and freely editable online encyclopedia Wikipedia: He posted a crummy, error-laden draft of the story to the site and let the community of members work on it and fix it.

Jacobs wrote on the page introducing the experiment. Esquire “would print the ‘before’ and ‘after’ versions of the articles. So here’s your chance to make this article a real one. All improvements welcome.”

According to the Wikipedia page for Jacobs’ story, the article was edited 224 times in the first 24 hours after Jacobs posted it, and another 149 times in the next 24 hours.

The final draft, which was locked on Sept. 23 to protect it from further edits, reflects the efforts of the many users who worked on it.

I think this is a truly interesting experiment.
I really like the idea behind Wikipedia, and the whole collective knowledge model, and I think it’s cool to see how it can be used for different purposes.

[Source: CNet]

Trackback Spam

If there’s anything I hate more than email spam and comment spam, then it must be trackback spam!

I’m getting bucket loads of trackback spam these days.
Just this morning I found around 40 linking to a bunch of porn, beastiality, fetish, gambling sites and what not.

The problem is that after the problem I had with my blog last August, MT-Blacklist, the plugin that I use to take care of comment and trackback spam, just stopped working efficiently on trackbacks because of some irregularities in the database that I only got to sort out this morning.

But still, even with the spam plugin, it’s very annoying.
Sometimes it just makes me feel like disabling all trackbacks from the blog, even though I don’t want to.

Being in a somehow violent mood after watching “Kill Bill” again last night, I wish I could go on a similar quest to rid the world of spammers.
I’ll have to pass by Japan first to get my Hattori Hanzo Katana though. And then the slashing begins…

Communication…

When I was younger, back when I was a teenager, I remember I used to write a lot of letters to my cousins in France and my friends all around the world. It was the most natural thing to just sit with a pen and paper for an hour writing a letter that would turn out 2 to 3 pages long.

Then came the internet and email, and suddenly I couldn’t even force myself to write one letter anymore. Either people upgraded their means of communication and started using email with me, or we’d be disconnected.
When I was in Jordan, my family would send me letters that I would read but rarely reply to just because I couldn’t bring myself to write one. This problem was only solved when my sister created an email address and became an intermediary.

But then that was too late, as instant messaging and real-time chats had come along, and I found email to be a rather slow and boring means of communication. That made me use email only when absolutely necessary.

The instant messaging market is still booming, but it’s no longer practical, with a huge list of contacts growing over the years. Catching up with my friends is now a tiresome act of switching between a bunch of windows and trying to keep up with a number of parallel and completely different conversations at the same time.

Now I have come to think that blogs are the best tool of communication, through which I can communicate with a big number of friends and people who share similar interests at once and get their feedback in an enriching and organized manner.

I wonder what’s the next step in the evolution of human communication…

MideastWire

While there are now more than 500 Arabic and Persian news outlets reporting stories from and about the Middle East, there is currently no affordable means for English speakers to gain access to much of this content. As a result, the overwhelming majority of English speaking businesspersons, students, journalists and others who have an interest in the affairs of the region are largely unaware of what the Middle East media is covering and how they are covering these stories.

Mideastwire.com, is a new news website, that aims to close this gap by offering a daily email newsletter of concise, translated briefs covering some of the key political, cultural, economic and opinion pieces appearing in the media of the 22 Arab countries, Iran and the Arab Diaspora.

Mideast Wire was started by four journalists associated with the Daily Star in Beirut; two Americans, Nicholas Noe and Seth Walls, and two Lebanese, Majdoline Hatoum and Maha al-Azar.

They wish to play a critical role in addressing at least one element of a global disconnect that continues to threaten a wide spectrum of socio-political and economic relationships, both here in the region and beyond.

I think this is a really great idea, although it’s a shame it’s not free, as making it a paid service limits it’s reach.
I understand that they need to make money to be profitable and keep on existing, but I think they should’ve gone for free content and built their business around smart advertising solutions.

Anyways, I wish them a lot of luck.
The Arab opinion must reach the whole world, and this is one great way to make it possible.

[Via: Thysdrus]

Taysir Alluni Sentenced to 7 Years in Jail

A Spanish judge sentenced Al-Jazeera’s correspondent Taysir Alluni to seven years in prison for what they called “collaborating with al-Qaida”.

Alluni, who has insisted on his innocence throughout Europe’s biggest al-Qaida trial, interviewed the group’s leader Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan weeks after the 11 September 2001 attacks in the United States.

Accused of acting as a financial courier to the group while in Afghanistan, Alluni, who had faced a maximum nine-year term, said in testimony he was only doing his job as a journalist.

A spokesman for the Arab Human Rights Committee confirmed that heavy political pressures were imposed on the court to issue such a sentence and said “There is no single evidence that may lead to such a sentence.”

I think this is totally absurd!
The guy was doing his job as a good journalist who got a chance to interview one of the hottest personalities on earth at that time.
Where is the freedom of press that the West pride themselves of?
Would we have seen the same sentence given out against Christian Amanpour from CNN for example?! I really doubt it!!

An Islamist threat like the Nazis?!!

An Islamist threat like the Nazis

In the September 19th edition of The Washington Times, an article by Tony Blankley, the editorial page editor of, and a weekly columnist for, The Washington Times, claims that the threat of Islam is like that of the Nazis.

He writes:

The threat of the radical Islamists taking over Europe is every bit as great to the United States as was the threat of the Nazis taking over Europe in the 1940s.

Beyond the growing number of Muslims committed to terrorism is the threat from the Islamic diaspora’s growing cultural and religious assertiveness — particularly in largely secular Europe, where Muslim cultural assimilation has not occurred.

…the overwhelming political fact deriving from the ferment in Islam is that, to some degree, some percentage of Muslims are prepared to murder — and are murdering — great numbers in what they feel is their religious duty.

Many more Muslims are, to some degree, supportive or protective of these killers. Even more Muslims, while not supportive of such tactics, share many of the terrorists’ religious convictions and perceptions.

The articles goes on painting muslims as murderers, likening muslims to nazis, and stressing their threat to the US and Europe, then urging Europeans to struggle for survival against Islam even in vigilante ways.

This is totally wrong, unacceptable and racist!
This man should not be allowed to ever write again and should be prosecuted for this article.

Is this the solution the “land of the free”, “the land of democracy, civilization and human rights”, has in mind?
Fight Islam, exterminate all muslims and get rid of them?!
Liken them to nazis and then commit another holocaust against them?! Who’s the nazi then?
And then who’s next, as Mohsan wonders, the Chinese?

[Via: Je Blog]
[Article: ‘An Islamist threat like the Nazis’]