Month: April 2006

My Little Story With Racism

I think that my upbringing, plus the fact that I grew up in Zimbabwe and also my getting to travel a lot, meeting different people and having friends from all races and nationalities, makes me one of the people who are the farthest from racism as possible.

I’m not just one of those people who go on about how they’re not racist but then say that it’s impossible for them to marry someone from this race or that, or who feel somehow superior to people from a certain nationality or race, and that list of contradictions goes on…
No, I’m someone who is genuinely un-racist. I wouldn’t have even hesitated to marry a woman from any other race or nationality if I truly fell in love with her. I have friends from all over the world who are different from me in race, nationality, religion and more; yet when I’m with them I don’t feel one bit of difference.

Anyway, what reminded me of all this is this experience I had when I was a kid in Zimbabwe, in which I was a victim of racism and not the opposite.

I must’ve been around 8 years old or so, and we lived in this compound which mainly consisted of families of foreigners, who were there for work or who newly settled in the country.

I had a number of friends from England, Greece and Portugal within the compound, and I had a bunch of Zimbabwean friends who lived in nearby buildings.

One of my black Zimbabwean friends belonged to a poor family that lived in a little house made of tin, not too far from the compound we lived in.
I really liked him and enjoyed playing with him a lot. I’d go around with other Zimbabwean friends sometimes and other times on my own, and we’d go out and play all kinds of games; Almost anything is enjoyable when you’re a kid.

Our friendship grew, and all was great until his father knew about it and he started telling his son not to play with me because I was white.

I thought that was unfair, and I didn’t understand why such a thing could matter at all, so I didn’t give up and I kept sneaking over to my friend’s place to take him out to play.

His father caught me while sneaking in a number of times and started running after me with a stick, trying to scare me away from coming back to play with his son, but I’d just outrun him, jump over fences, go through some of my other friend’s houses to lose him, and then just run back to take his son out to play before he got back.

It was a challenge for me. I wouldn’t tolerate someone judging me by my colour. How come he let his son play with other black kids, but stopped him when it came to me?!
And so I went on coming back time and time again.

In the end he just gave up; I think he finally realized I was unstoppable and that I would go on playing with his son whether he liked it or not.

That memory still passes through my mind every now and then, and makes me wish that we were all more like children, and that we’d stop judging each other for all the stupid reasons we put between us. Why can’t we all just accept each other for what we are and embrace our differences and accept them as enriching elements that make each one of us unique.

Microsoft Windows XP Starter Edition for Africa

Microsoft will be releasing a lower-priced version of their Windows XP operating system for Africa, this July. The system will work on cheaper machines and is designed for entry-level PC users in Africa. It will also have Africa-themed screensavers and background wallpaper among its features.

This is something I’ve been convinced software companies like Microsoft should’ve done a long time ago. Having one price for software worldwide is stupid, because what a person in a poor “third world” country can afford to pay for a piece of software is nowhere near what someone in the US or Western Europe can pay.

And I think that is one of the main reasons it’s almost impossible to apply copyright laws on software in these poorer countries, because people would rather go through the risk of buying pirated software than having to pay the expensive price of original software.
And who loses in the end? The software company.

I’m not too sure if this move isn’t already too late, but well, better late than never, I guess.

Still, the whole world is waiting for Windows Vista and what they are offering Africa is a stripped down version of old Windows XP. Not really the right approach. But well, for an entry level user, who can only afford cheaper, older, hardware, this should be good enough.
But the software companies should also think about the people who just a bit better off financially, and who want to buy the latest version of the software at a price that is reasonable for them.

Google Does English <-> Arabic Translation

So Google have added “English to Arabic” and “Arabic to English” translation to their Language Tools page.

It’s still in beta of course, although alpha is a bit more like it.
The results are quite amusing, if not straight out funny, but then again, nobody ever said Arabic was an easy and simple language.
I’m sure it’ll get better with time, faster than Chinese at least.

It’s really good to see Google venturing into Arabic though. Hopefully the next step will be an Arabic Google News. After all there are more Arabic speakers in this world than Hebrew speakers, and they already got a Hebrew version of Google News.

[Via: 360east]

Video Game Advertising

The other day, I read this article about how video games are poised to become big businesses for advertisers, as more and more companies pay real money for virtual ads posted in the cyber-worlds created by gaming companies.

According to one of Yankee Group’s latest reports, it seems that advertisers are finding greater value and return on investment from in-game advertising.

The report estimated that advertisers spent approximately $56m placing ads in video games in 2005, up from $34m in 2004, and that the market shows no signs of slowing.

I’ve already seen a bunch of games that show in-game ads, and I too expect it will double and triple as advertisers try to stick their logos and offers in every available space in front of our eyes, both virtually and in reality.

I think this could make game design an even more lucrative business for companies, but they should at least be decent enough to lower the prices of the games. Shoving ads everywhere and still making us pay a high price for the games isn’t quite a good deal for us.

I also think that ads of this nature, if used, should be discreet, not splashed all over the place, and that they should certainly not affect game play or make it annoying.

For example, if in Grand Theft Auto, the character were to go into a KFC instead of a Cluckin’ Bell, or into a Gold’s Gym instead of Los Santos Gym, it wouldn’t affect the gameplay and could still be good advertising.

Nintendo Revolution Becomes Nintendo Wii

So, you’re Nintendo, a game console company that is betting everything on its new game console. You’re third in the world game console market, and you want to win some market share against the heavyweight champion, Sony’s Playstation, and the wannabe champion Microsoft’s Xbox.

You came up with a cool name for your console, Nintendo Revolution, and you got people pretty hyped about it and waiting to see what it turns out like.

And then what do you do in your marketing moment of genius?

You scrap the cool name that everyone has gotten used to and you replace it with some weird shitty name like “Wii”.
And what’s your explanation? “Pronounced ‘we’, the name emphasizes this console is for everyone. Wii can easily be remembered by people around the world, no matter what language they speak. No confusion. No need to abbreviate. Just Wii.”

Whatever…
I don’t know where they come up with dumb ideas like this from?

Amman’s First Charity Rock Festival

A blogospheric friend asked me, as a little favor, to post about this event that’s taking place in Jordan; and as it’s for a good deed, I could do nothing but help.

The first charity rock festival is taking place in Amman (Jordan) next Friday, May 5th. It will be at the Haya Cultural Center, in Shmeisani of course.

The open-air concert will be featuring the live local rock bands Atmosphere, Euphoria, Symphovainia and Farhan’s Band playing originals as well as covers of songs by Metallica, Megadeth, Lacuna Coil, System of a Down and more.

All the proceeds from the concert will be going to orphans.

Click on the poster or go here for more details.

German Brothel Ad Angers Muslims

germanad.jpgPascha, a Cologne brothel touting for clients with a World Cup-themed banner, has blacked out the flags of Iran and Saudi Arabia after alleged threats from Muslims.

The giant banner on a high-rise building shows a semi-naked woman and the flags of the 32 countries in the World Cup, which kicks off in June.

The slogan on the ad reads: “The world is a guest of female friends” – a variant of the official World Cup slogan: “The world is a guest of friends”.

The Tunisian flag – bearing the Muslim crescent symbol and a star marking the five pillars of Islam – remains on the ad, however.

It seems nobody takes us Tunisians seriously as Muslims, after all why should they if we ourselves don’t take our religion seriously anymore?

[Source: BBC News]
[Via: Thysdrus]

Convert People to Firefox and Win Money

A group of Firefox advocates from Massachusetts is offering website publishers and bloggers $1 for each Internet Explorer visitor to their sites they can convince to switch to the Mozilla Firefox browser.

This comes after Google’s recent $1 referral payout for people who install Firefox with the Google toolbar.

The four anti-Microsoft activists from Massachusetts have developed a series of free scripts that website owners can add to their sites that will detect whether visitors are running Internet Eplorer. Depending on the script, the website will either show a splash page telling them to switch to Firefox or it will put a big switch banner at the top of the page.

The group explains its actions in an open letter on their website.

“Firefox is one of the most important software applications in the world because it can play a big part in determining the future of the web. It is crucial that an open-source, standards-based web browser becomes the most popular browser, and Firefox has a shot at being that.”, they say.

Another interesting development in the life of Firefox. I wonder how much it will help in the spreading of Firefox and the demise of Internet Explorer.

Check their website: Explorer Destroyer.

Practicing Islam in Space

I just read an article on NewScientist about how Malaysia’s National Space Agency is trying to determine how its astronaut candidates will practice Islam in space. Three of its four astronaut candidates are Muslim, and two will be selected for a future Russian space flight.

Once in their orbiting spacecraft, they will circle the Earth once every 90 minutes. Traditionally, Muslims pray five times per day, at times connected to the position of the Sun in the sky. This will make prayer observance a challenge if they accept a “day” as being just 90 minutes long.

Additionally, Muslims turn toward Mecca when they pray. Zooming around the Earth at 28,000 kilometres per hour might make pinpointing the exact location of Mecca pretty tricky.

There’s also a problem when it comes to ablutions, a sort of cleansing ritual, before prayer. But water is used sparingly in space and does not flow downward in microgravity.

Personally, I think these problems are superficial because Islam is an easy religion, and through its verses and the teachings of Prophet Muhammad PBUH, we know that what really counts is the will to do a certain thing such as worship, and that there are ways around to make things more practical and easier for the unable.

So, regarding the times of prayer, just like for Muslims who live close to Earth’s polar regions or at high altitudes; They should simply pick various times that would roughly correspond to their morning, noon, afternoon, sunset and night prayers.
As for praying towards the location of Mecca, if it’s impossible to pinpoint the exact location, it’s not really necessary, an estimation will do. After all, it’s the will that counts.
And when it comes to ablutions, let’s not forget that Islam started out in the Arab peninsula, so mostly desert, and they didn’t always have access to water, and so there is a process called Tayammum which is a dry form of ablution.