Kill Bill Edition Settings of standard edition A User screenshot

Name: Slax OS Family: Linux Developer: Tomas Matejicek Licence: GPL This is the best tiny distribution I've ever found for new Linux users; it's easy to use with a potent desktop environment (KDE 3.5) and with Linux kernel 2.6 that offers a good support of different hardware (USB, wifi…etc). Based on the Slackware distribution, Slax is can be run from a small minidisk (or even from a bootable USB); its standard version has nearly a 190 MB size, this let me make a copy of it I always have in my pocket when I go to university :) Slax does not pretend so much in matter of requirements, to run the Xwindow window manager (with KDE) you will need 144 MB of RAM memory, your processor will be good for sure (minimal i486 Pentium or AMD needed). Slax comes in different editions: Standard, KillBill (that I have), Server and Popcorn. KillBill contains qemu and wine, Popcorn is only 128 MB (good if your flash is of this size). Another characteristic of Slax is its modularity, modules for Slax can be easily added and you can find thousands of them on the web. Official Site of Slax is here

Labels: OS, Technology

I think it's expected I will write on Saddam's execution, the fact that all media and blogs are talking about surely will not allow me to say something new, anyway I have to state five important points:

1. I do not know if Saddam was guilty or not, but for sure I can doubt the court's legality, the only fact it was established under a military occupation, the political pressure and the predetermined condemn, let the trial nearer to a miserable mise-en-scene than a good start for the new Iraqi jurisprudence.
2. Only Israel and Iran were really 'happy' of the killing of Saddam. Arab people must be aware of their plans, and what the US (unconsciously) do in favor or Iranian Ayatollahs.
3. The hanging today, the day of sacrifice, a religious festivity was an obvious taunt of Muslims around the world.
4. Today, there was a good lesson for third world leaders (especially Arabs); your good relations with Americans will not be so enduring, the time US administration will have bored of yours presence, they will probably hang you. I remember our political science professor used to say: In politics, there are no friends and no enemies forever.
5. Saddam trial and execution were not on International Standards as a Mr. Rubaie said, they were not reflecting the dreadfully advertised human rights, which US tried to export in Iraq, so was Saddam recorded at the moment of death? Will his corpse be threw somewhere far from his parents? Such things are minimal as compared with the heinous acts of America in Iraq. I ask who will sentence to death the responsible of more than 700000 Iraqi victims in this war. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Labels: Politics

Ok my friend Anas told me about that:

1 - Open google.com
2 - Insert the word "failure" in the search box.
3 - Press "I'm Feeling Lucky" button
4 - Laugh!!

Labels: Fun

Today I've gone to my university, although the bad weather and snow-covered roads, for only one reason: I've had a UNIX quiz.

I've waked up at temperature surely less than zero, and then I thought if it was more convenient to leave my home and start a gelid day, or to stay home. I've opted for the first, although the quiz was 'optional'… but here, the fact the quiz was optional is irrelevant, when you are even in need of a single mark (on hundred) you will try to get it in anyway …

However, I've reached the university; I've headed to the hall happy to take my quiz until one of the guys of UNIX course stopped me to ask: Where are you going? Don't you know there's no quiz … ehm… and don't you know our instructor traveled away?

Minute of silence… is he serious or today is April fool's day?

It's not the first time our UNIX lecturer (Mr. M.S) tease us. A Sunday, one reserved only for exams (no lectures) we were forced to go to university to take another quiz but we found Mr. M.S absent.

Ok, Mr. M.S left Jordan today to gain a PhD in the US , but it was so difficult to inform us of your travel before, or you've known of only at ten o'clock this morning? You were late at all your lectures, and at a number of them you never come, we take our first and second exams after nearly two weeks of their predetermined date, but what you've done today is really enough…instructors here always criticize students they are undisciplined, but you are worse than us one hundred times…

Labels: JUST, Personal

New search engine that depends on human judgment rather than Google computer-based algorithms

Jimmy Wales is the man behind Wikipedia, the multilingual free encyclopedia written collaboratively by millions of people around the world. The encyclopedia is totally online and its site is a wiki, this means that anyone is allowed to edit or add articles, no matter how correct or accurate they are. This led Wikipedia to a sort of controversial status, with many ask the same repeated question: how much are these articles reliable? On the other side, there are people who adore it… (Me for example) why not since it's the incarnation of all open source philosophies?

Ok, now take this idea: only what the people say and what people want matter… put it in practice for a search engine, and you will get Wikiasari; the wiki alternative to Google.

Amazon.com and other Silicon Valley financiers had already invested millions of dollars in the Wikiasari, they also know that a failure for a similar project is plausible, and to compete with Google (90% of searches online are made with it) the only key of success will be public collaboration and Wales' courage (or maybe madness).

Good Luck! (You need it)

For more info, visit this page: http://search.wikia.com/

Labels: Technology

Labels: Arabic, Politics, Then...and Now

Today, the deanship of students' affairs in JUST held a nice art exhibition in the show room hall beside al-Farouq hall in Engineering Faculties Complex.

Up to 40 drawings are on view in this exhibition, all of student Shorouq Shabsough (Pharm, 5th year) and this is the fourth time these artworks are shown to the audience in our university, although several other exhibitions for this artist were hold in JU, Yarmouk University, Mutah University as well as Saudi Arabia. Shabsough fully merited the third place in the nationwide prize for drawing - 2002.

Artistic Technique: The major intension of the artist is to deposit all her energy in these oeuvres that are based on an essential thought of a principle, a sentiment or a feeling from which she mixes several colors in the most proper way, aiming to express herself in boundless freedom and liberty.

The other side of the works is represented by her strong sense of belonging to Jordan, so she depicts the passion to her country by pure fantasia. She lives again by these paintings her Caucasian origins and testifies the relationship with ancestors; Circassian culture and folklore are evidently mirrored in her artistic personality.

Labels: Art, JUST

Opening multiple windows... Take a look at windows' back Changing the desktop...

Yesterday, Dr. Basel Mahafzah, our Computer Architecture instructor showed us a short video of a 3D operating system (or more technically, a desktop environment for MS Windows and SunOs), and told us it was developed by a group of students for the OS class in their university. The project's name is Project Looking Glass, it was developed almost in Java and it's large supported by Sun Microsystems, the whole code is open source with a GNU General Public License (GPL) license. After the short installation, you'll be able to move and rotate windows as if they were sheets of paper (or more precisely, as if they're made of glass), you can even write on the back of any window! The fact is: why students from Techno do not develop such things? They never thought of taking up similar projects…and this is in some way strange, since we have –technically- the needed abilities and knowledge…we need only will! One of major things I hate in my university is the fixation of students and instructors to only one thing: marks, so here it's an endless action-reaction between poor students, which study to get decent marks, and between psychopathic (!) instructors trying to make exams even more difficult. We have as result large numbers of students who have very little time for, or don't wish to carry up, something out of the ordinary. In this way, we have killed any form of creativity… To download the video, click here. To download the project, visit this page. (PS: Me and my friend Nasser have thought of making something similar, perhaps for graduation project… and don't steal our idea!)

Labels: JUST, OS, Personal, Technology

Is that a hearsay, or uncle Bill really wants to be the president of the United States ?

I don't know if any of these gossips could be true. Anyway, different sites on the net are imagining what will be the consequences of such a decision…

Mr. William Henry Gates III , if you don't know, is the president of Microsoft Corporation and has a large number of supporters and fans worldwide(?). In a recent ZDNet poll, nearly 65% expressed their support for a possible candidature of Bill. More than this, the www.billgatesforpresident.net blog is having more and more visitors around the world, it is looking for people to join the (until now virtual) political campaign, and it will publish online polls with Bill facing other potential candidates for 2008 elections.

How it all began? Probably all started with a post in Dilbert Blog, when Scott Adams predicted an 'atheist business leader' as future candidate for US president, so he named Bill Gates as most appropriate:

Bill Gates will have done so much good for the world through his charitable works that combined with his business success he'll appear more qualified than any other candidate.

However, days ago Adams criticized the billgatesforpresident blog, stating that his ideal president would be a mixture of Mother Teresa, Carl Sagan, Warren Buffet, and Darth Vader, and Bill (according to Adams) has all of their good stuff;

Forget about whatever Bill Gates did in the past that made you curl up with your free copy of Linux and cry. In his first week in office he'd probably link Microsoft Virtual Earth to the government's spy satellites so you can look for Osama yourself. I've always felt that terrorism is a technology problem disguised as a political problem. Bill Gates can fix that.

Labels: Fun, What's on the web

Labels: Arabic, Politics, Then...and Now

Less than a year ago, I was one of participants in the Microsoft Academic Day (MAD), a kind of meeting induced by Microsoft, which aims to present its products to the students of universities and to who begins to have a little knowledge in software development.
I must say that MAD was quite well-organized, it was held in a hall of PSUT, and was partially ordered by .net student clubs, which regroup a tiny number of our university students. I do not have anything against Microsoft (that's the contrary of what a lot of people think), but, first of all, I was somehow shocked by the aggressive responses of lecturers, in particular when some students tried to have an argument with them. I remember that one of Techno, responsible in .net club, denied rightly what a lecturer said; that an entire web site can be build up using Microsoft technologies in less than 15 minutes. The student told him it was practically impossible, and said that pages with ASP.NET components are not displayed correctly on Firefox browser. The lecturer answered by a number of insults to Firefox, Mozilla and non-IE browsers, and he laid blame on them for being non-standard (?). (A Yarmouk guy wearing a Firefox T-shirt was sitting first in line nearby Microsoft representatives; I don't think he was in agreement with him).
The presentation of Windows Vista was apparently exciting, (naturally, if you forget security threats… Microsoft personnel told us that security is a 'server-only' stuff). The look is extremely nice, and all the elements are well-designed, the solitaire icon is very cute (wow!), and the animation caused by pressing (ALT+TAB) moves between windows in an attractive fashion, -but I made a bet with a friend that the computer would have crashed :), however I admit the appearance of MAC OS X is better.
One point: Microsoft staff said the minimal requirements for Windows Vista are 1GB RAM and some 256 VGA card…!
The presentation of IE7 was to show a real life application of multiple forms of plagiarism; IE7 browser tags and RSS feeds were taken evidently from Firefox…
Another funny section was that of DirectX, with a student from BAU showing us his 3D project of Petra, very appreciated by Mr. Gates in his visit to Jordan.
Speakers from students asked why use DirectX since they find OpenGL better, the answers were not so convincing (and they nearly made a mockery of them); the same was when they spoke about PHP, Java, MySQL and other open source products, so nothing new… this is typical of Microsoft.

Labels: Personal, Technology

Daddy, Is this Santa?		"Divine Victory" :)
100% Political activist of Hezbollah		"Hezbollah: Islamic Resistance in Lebanon"

Labels: Fun, Politics

No I do not mean myself … (Metallers are having bad reputation here lately), I'm talking about Japanese anime accused to be satanic, and mainly the set of cards related to these cartoons.
Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh cards represent skulls, dragons and other mythological creatures are seen by many as a "work of the devil" and are accused to be a kind of worship to demons; read what's written in this web site:

(Satan) uses the occult to ensnare the minds of people, and he works to introduce people to the occult by using supposedly "innocent" games like Yu Gi Oh.

Adding;

(T)he devil (satan), who uses his demonic power to blind the minds of children and adults nationwide to the dangers of Yu-Gi-Oh. Yu-Gi-Oh is an occult oriented game and anything of the occult is dangerous. You say, “That is ridiculous! Yu-Gi-Oh is just kids stuff, a card game, a cartoon!” That is exactly what Satan wants you to believe.

And the whole page is an official accuse to Yu-Gi-Oh and Magic of being demonic. Gregory Reid goes on with this thesis, but in a scientific-historical approach. (You can read his page full of explanation of the card images here).

They let me remember an unordinary 'fatwa' issued years ago here in Jordan and the whole Arab world, that severly prohibited playing with, purchasing and collecting Pokemon cards. Pokemon was banned also from TV...what a pity!

Mui, in his political Italian blog, found the argument ridiculous and absurd. Sarcastically; he said that we must inform President Bush that Pokemons will move our world forward a catastrophic end, so he asked: "Why shall we make the things in this world so complicated, if we know that the main reason is Pokemon?"

PS: Although I wrote this article, and this blog is named after Yugi, I have no intention to talk about Yu-Gi-Oh again here.

Labels: Fun, What's on the web

The first program to be learnt by CS freshmen is a Hello world! program, a simple program that shows the general syntax of a programming language and a basic output statement... In this blog I chose Hello world as title for my first post. Probably nobody will read it (until now i've not told anyone about this blog). If you find this blog (either by chance) feel free to give a comment or to send me an e-mail. Bye!!!

Labels: Personal