Hajj

All praise be to Allah, I am back from Mecca after performing Hajj
It was not as hard as I thought; the modern arrangements made the 5 Millions look like only 500 Thousands.

Asif Ali, another Musharaf

The Pakistanis did not want to be ruled by a man in the military, and America responded by sending a new one.

Asif Ali (12 years in prison for corrupt) is the new president; a new American agent with civilian dress this time, I am afraid he has paid the price (staging the slaughter of his wife, to become Shahida) so gets the office by people's votes. Get more by clicking the title

I am afraid we have to grow up ...

High Tech Tire (Click)

At last, tires are getting a focus; I have always hoped for this kind of thing, I have always doubted the pressure and the general state of my tires, and also doubted the opinion of the shops workers who possibly wanted to sell new ones. Read more on the new tech from Pirelli

Musharaf: down & out

That's it .....Musharaf, who claims to be of Pakistan, is gone !!!
He received a "safe passage" to some country, thanks to USA, UK & KSA (as they care about Paksitan !!!!! they do care about others, too)
He had to leave because he does not belong to Pakistan. On Nov. 25th, 2007, I wrote something about Musharraf, and here is the link

http://eldosblog.blogspot.com/2007/11/rudd-versus-musharraf.html

Cameras (Click)

I like the technology when it is reasonable; a camera with face detection allows a novice to shoot (maybe another novice) with his face in the middle of the picture, while smile shutters allow shooting when people smile to the camera, no cheese no nothing.

I like that, but what if we live in a place where people don’t smile? Whether it is their nature, war, poverty or disaster! The earth is mostly of this kind of people, those who have one or more of those “blessings”

Click the title above to see a clip of how a cute boy makes the camera shoot

Lego (Click)

Lego ? is this real or what ? I am afraid it is "what"
Imagine yourself getting few basic hadrware modules of your choosing, downloading pieces of software modules over the net and ... having a gadget in an hour or so ! isn't this great ? this is an emerging technology, it is real and is going to be more popular and affordable soon

Income & Tax (Click)

I have come to know some numebrs regarding the income and tax of the top offices in the US.

President G. Bush and his wife, Laura, paid $221,635 in federal taxes on an adjusted gross income of $923,807 for the year 2007, including $400,000 as president salary $150,000 advance received by his wife for the children's book she co-authored with her daughter, Jenna.

Vice President D. Cheney and his wife, Lynne, had an adjusted gross income of $3.04 million in 2007. They owed $602,651 in federal taxes on that income; paid $466,165 through withholdings and estimated tax payments, and will pay the remaining $136,486 upon filing their tax return.

I am eager to knwo what the numbers are around the world! I mean how the other presidents get their money, how much they get and how much they pay as tax (if they ever do).

Memory Nanotechnology (Click)

IBM scientists are working on a new solid-state memory technology that aims to combine the best attributes of flash, like having no moving parts, and the low cost of hard drives for an inexpensive form of nonvolatile memory that will be stable and durable.

It nanotechnology that stores information in thousands of atoms in magnetic nanowires. Electrical charge causes data to move swiftly along a U-shaped pipe (hence the name "racetrack") that allows 16 bits of data to be read or written trough a single transistor in less than a nanosecond, without moving the atoms. Cells don’t wear out like the flash memory or magnetic pets, and the capacities will even exceed that of the magnetic disk. So, more capacitive, cheaper, longer life and even less power demand, but few years of wait to be commercialized. Click the title to see it on YouTube.

The Internet ...

Joseph Weizenbaum summarizes his critical perspective on technology, he said:

“The Internet is like one of those garbage dumps outside of Bombay. There are people, most unfortunately, crawling all over it and maybe they find a bit of aluminum, or perhaps something they can sell. But mainly it’s garbage.”

After the article appeared in New York Times 1999, he wrote a letter to the Times:

“I did say that, but I went on to say: There are gold mines and pearls in there that a person trained to design good questions can find.”

This is the Internet; look at the forums, blogs and trash can like websites that you have to see when you surf unless you design good quesuions to discard most of that.

UAH ! I missed you

I missed my school; 12 years ago I left the University of Alabama in Huntsville after 6 years of peaceful and happy life with my family, where I received my M.S. and Ph.D. degrees. As a space grant college, UAH has always been granted generous support from NASA, SDI, DARPA, Boeing and many other high tech organizations and institutions.

The picture shows UAH undergraduate students float in a microgravity environment aboard a NASA DC-9 aircraft over the Gulf of Mexico. UAH is one of a handful of universities that sends student teams to conduct experiments in a zero gravity environment. The plane performs parabolic maneuvers at 35,000 feet above sea level, creating 20 or 25 seconds of weightlessness.

Moussa Castle (Click)

Moussa (known as the architect) is a success story; the now 74 years old man (with a hat) from Deir El Qamar, th seat of the Lebanon governer in the past, had a dream of building a castle and his fellow student made fun of him and so did a girl he loved; he was a poor kid while she was born to a man of wealth. He took the challenge and built the castle by himself in 41 years, and his effort had the UNESCO list his site as an international heritage. A museum inside the castle displays the life in Lebanon in that era (1960's). The pictures below show a teacher giving a lesson (what a lesson ? !), and a men and women carry normal daily activities. Click the title to visit the website of Moussa. (Google Earth: Lat 33.7006 and Lon 35.5835)

3 Years Blog

I have started blogging around 3 years ago as a proof of life; i.e. to make a presence only. I thought of it then as a way to help pass some new tech stuff to my students. Now, it is my way of speaking loud; I say my word regarding things and events around us, like the 10 lives worth phone.

I receive only few comments (silly, most of the time) because I have never wanted that; no labels, no hidden keywords or anything that promotes the site. But I have to admit it; it bugs me to the bone to see a silly blog making a big fuss. After all, blogging is a footprint that everyone should try to make as wide as possible, to raise awareness regarding serious issues of our life.

An iPhone (Click)

This is a real iPhone, but with prince cut diamond; original price is 400 USD and the diamond is for just 176,000 USD more; a total 176,400 USD.
A hungry human (or huwoman) in Africa needs only 30 USD per month to survive; this phone is worth the life of 10 persons (African class of course). I don't buy such a phone, even for a 50% discount. Luckily, there is a cheap alternative; the Motorola phones with diamons are sold for only 10,000 USD; designed with the poor rich in mind.

The Power of 0.9 (Click)

The C8051F9xx is a new low cost low power 8-bit MCUs operated at 0.9 V, with 64 Kbytes of flash, 4 Kbytes of SRAM housed in 4mmx4mm package t. This means a true single-cell battery solution. The device has a typical sleep-mode current of less than 50 nA and active-mode current is as low as 170 µA/MHz and total of 65 mW of power consumption.

Also have a 10-bit 300-ksample/s A/D converter, a smart RTC, and hardware enhanced UART, SPI and SMBus serial ports, and cost only 2 USD when buying 10,000 pieces. At 25 MHz operating frequency, it can deliver up to 25 MIPS due to the novel pipelined architecture. Click the title for a chance to win a development kit.

Languages ...

All we need from languages, is a way to communicate with others, and theoretically one is good enough. However, largely dispersed nations of the ancient times has resulted in more and more dialects and languages, to the degree they are so numerous now. On the other hand, as the nations are getting closer to each other, languages are facing a risk; Over 50% of the world's 6000 languages are endangered, and one language disappears on average every two weeks.

The UNESCO reports show that 96% of the world's 6000 languages are spoken by 4% of the world's population, and 90% of the world's languages are not represented on the Internet. Many of these languages are not well established; numbers show that 80% of the African languages have no orthography.

The UNESCO decided to promote and safeguard endangered languages and linguistic diversity as an essential part of the living heritage of humanity, through its Endangered Languages Program. But I believe, with all respect to the nations heritage, that focusing on fewer languages, and promoting learning these languages is far better, and will get nations closer to each other and provide better communication through the Internet and future technologies. The question is: who will give up his language for the sake of others to stay?, and the answer is simply another question: should the English or Arabic disappear to promote a poor language spoken by few thousands and had no literature ?

1500 years ago ...

The world's most important and blessed event has already happened; that was 1500 years ago, when prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him) was born in Mecca. Now, nearly 1.5 Billion followers is the count and it's rising by the will of Allah. Those who don't join are absolutelty the losers as we consider the iternal life. Muslims look weak and behind today, but will one day be stronger as they were once, and will have true Omar, Ali, Othman, Khalid, Mo'tasim and Salah, just to name few ... . Peace & Prayers be upon you our prophet as we observe your birthday Thursday 20/3/2008

Tower & Power (Click)

A tower and a well placed set of mirrors to focus the light energy on the tower top, where a steam turbin generates electricity. Spain and Abu Dhabi are the places for this rare technology, click to read more

Gaza? Call later (Link Removed)

If you care about human being, regardless of their skin color, gender, religion, nationality, .... then check out this link, to see what the "the state of Israel" is doing to people who can hardly afford basic life, and yet they claim that they possess weapons and rockets, while only some of them could get primitive weapons (some are home made) to defend themselves and their dignity ...

Gazzans ... we are sleeping now, please call later ! or call Al Nasir Salah Edeen, Al Mo'tasim, Khalid Bin Alwaleed ... for emergency. Click the title for more, a website in many languages tells true stories, not the media polished stuff

CeBIT Tech Raid (Click)

Thank God we don't make any products here in Jordan; 51 gadgets vendors were caught in patent rights violation raid at the CeBIT Tech Fair in Hanover-Germany.

I have been to this world class fair in the 1987 ...
there was no raid at that time (because there were no MP3, MP4, Cell Phones, ... at that time); as reports says 180 policeman and custom officials carried out the raid, and out of the 51 patent violating vendors 24 from China, 12 from Taiwan, 3 from Hong Kong ....and of course not even a single one from the Arab world, we always stay on the safe side and don't risk our future by trying the manufacturing business. Read the AP reports ....

New Autos

A concept car for the future, especially in Jordan where the fuel prices has reached the skies ...
Unfortunately, there is only one color ... the red, which possibly hides the risk of even higher taxes ....
It is like saying: wherever you go ... we are with you !