Month: September 2006

Anousheh Ansari, First Muslim Woman On International Space Station

Iranian-born Anousheh Ansari made history last thursday, when she became the first Muslim woman to reach the International Space Station on board Russian Soyuz spacecraft along with two astronauts.

Ansari is also the world’s first female space tourist. She accompanied NASA’s Michael Lopez-Alegria and Russia’s Mikhail Tyurin.

The three blasted off on Monday from Russia’s Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Their TMA-9 space vehicle docked successfully with the ISS at 0521 GMT.

Ansari, who owns a telecom company in the US, paid $20 million to make her space dream come true after a six-month course of Russian language and cosmonaut at the Gagarin centre in Stellar City near Moscow.

The first muslim man in space was Prince Sultan ibn Salman ibn ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa’ud of Saudi Arabia who traveled to space aboard a NASA space shuttle in 1985.

Triple-Standard DVD

Some promising news from the DVD standards front…

The electronics industry is in a fine mess, with two blue-laser disc standards (Blu-ray and HD-DVD) competing to succeed ordinary red-laser DVDs.

However, two top Warner engineers, Alan Bell and Lewis Ostrover, have been working on a cheaper and more elegant solution.

Blu-ray uses a 405-nanometre wavelength laser to read data from tracks 0.1-millimetres-deep on the top surface of a disc. HD-DVD, on the other hand, uses the same wavelength to read recordings at a depth of 0.6 mm.

Warner

Fourth Marriage Anniversary

On this day exactly four years ago, Eman and I got married… Yep, today is our fourth marriage anniversary… Four years of bliss and happiness…

We’ve come a long way over the past four years, we’ve gone through many events, we’ve accomplished many things; even though time has flown by and it still feels like we got married yesterday.

This year’s anniversary is extra special because we were given a very precious gift from God, our son Adam, and now we’ve moved on from “couple” to “small family”, and it feels amazing.

To my dear wife: I can’t imagine myself spending my life any other way, nor with any other person than with you. I love you more than words can tell.
Thank you for making my life as beautiful and complete as you have. I hope God helps me to make you the happiest always.

BMW’s First Hydrogen Cars In 2007

More cleaner energy efforts, this time from BMW…

German automaker BMW said that it would begin distributing the world’s first hydrogen-burning cars to selected users in the U.S. and Europe next year.

The cars are 7-Series sedans powered by 12-cylinder internal-combustion engines capable of burning gasoline or liquefied hydrogen.

BMW, which has been working on hydrogen fuel technology since 1978, will build and distribute about 100 of the vehicles for a variety of uses.

Users, who would not be charged for the cars, could include politicians, celebrities, drivers in corporate fleets and members of the public. Some would receive the cars for prolonged periods, others for short test drives.

General Motors Corp. and other big carmakers are working on fuel-cell vehicles that would use hydrogen in an electrochemical process to produce electricity to power a motor.
Ford Motor Co. and Japanese affiliate Mazda Motor Corp. also are working to develop internal-combustion engines that run on hydrogen.

[Source: LA Times]

I wonder if I’ll qualify to get one of those cars to test and play around with…
I mean wouldn’t they need some real world information from at least one person from the Africa and Middle East region, someone like me for example?

Amazon Unbox: Video Download Service

Amazon.com have finally released their online video download service by the name of Amazon Unbox.

Amazon Unbox will offer content from six major Hollywood studios, including 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros., as well as TV networks such as CBS and Fox and cable channels like Comedy Central and E! Entertainment.

It’s obvious Amazon.com rushed this service out quickly this week in an attempt to beat Apple to the market by a few days.

I haven’t had the chance to try it out yet, but it doesn’t look that promising from what I’ve read on Techdirt.

Apparently it brings nothing new to the market, simply another clone of the existing services with the same problems and downsides.
It only works on Windows; it has unflexible portability, unfair copy protection and limited usage; and the prices are relatively high.

So basically it looks like this service brings nothing new to the already dull video download market.

Something the video download business should have learned from the music download business is that it’s the little details in how you do it, how easy it is to use and how good the price is that counts.
Apple’s offer should be coming out in a few days now, and everyone’s expecting they’ll do it all in a slightly differently way and revolutionize the business just like they did with iTunes and the music download business.
I’m not as optimistic as everyone else because after all, Apple or not, a lot of it depends on how much the studios are willing to play ball, and it doesn’t look like they’re thinking straight yet. Anyway I’m sure Apple’s offering will come out better than what is available in the market now at least.

Europe Gets Its First Pro-Israel Lobby

Europe gets its AIPAC…

A new organization named “European Friends of Israel” is expected to be inaugurated next week in Brussels with the aim of becoming an AIPAC-type pro-Israel lobby in Europe.

Several pro-Israel European Union parliament members who were recently joined by a number of Jewish businessmen sponsoring their activity have decided to institutionalize their endeavor in order to boost cooperation between pro-Israel parliamentarians throughout the continent and help in improving Israel

Programming Quotations

“Programming can be fun, so can cryptography; however they should not be combined.” — Kreitzberg and Shneiderman

“Computers are good at following instructions, but not at reading your mind.” — Donald Knuth

“The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time.” — Tom Cargill

“Before software can be reusable it first has to be usable.” — Ralph Johnson

“Programmers are in a race with the Universe to create bigger and better idiot-proof programs, while the Universe is trying to create bigger and better idiots. So far the Universe is winning.” — Anon

“There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third works.” — Alan J. Perlis

“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” — H L Mencken

“One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs.” — Robert Firth

“I’ve finally learned what “upward compatible” means. It means we get to keep all our old mistakes.” — Dennie van Tassel

More programmlng quotes can be found here.

Common Sounds In A Programming Environment

This is a list of the most common sounds you’ll hear from a bunch of developers in a programming environment with a little explanation of each sound.

– “Aaaaaah!”: Someone finally found the dumb reason why something was acting weird.

– “Hmmmm”: A new thing to solve, a new programming challenge. Good.

– “Grrrrrrr!”: A new bug has just been reported by Mr. Stick-up-his-ass QA guy.

– “Huh??!” or “What the …!!!”: Something weird/unexpected just happened. No need to be alarmed yet.

– “Bang!” (on keyboard or desk) or sudden swearing: PC crashed before the developer got to save his work, or something of that caliber.

– “Zzzzzzz”: Someone just fell asleep on his keyboard.

– “Oops!”: Nothing big, a minor manipulation error, something small deleted or the like.

– “Oh Shit!”: Quite a big error, but something that will eventually pass, most of the times.

– Sudden silence (coupled with a slightly detectable shaking of the hands and small streams of cold sweat): Really big screwup, time to panic and start looking for a job.

– Machine gun sound: Run! One of the developers’ stress level most probably maxed out, and he’s on a de-stress killing spree.

These are the sounds that came to mind while writing this, I’m sure there are others I forgot to mention, if you remember any other ones, you’re welcome to add them in the comments section.