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 !

Zenith: Your Money !

The swiss watch maker claims that its Defy Xtreme, can survive ...., well, maybe they wanted to say .... "doomsday"?, but who cares about time then? .... For me, doomsday starts by paying 500,000 USD for such a thing . Click the title for more details and see where where your money will go if you buy it; maybe 1,000 Feet under water.

Hardly noticed that

What a miserable world ? !

In a blink of an eye, 80 people dead and 70 wounded in Afganestan (Ah, may be tha's why !!!)), and we hardly pay attention to that. Numbers are possibly not less in numerous places around the globe.

Click the title to read if you still care, and be careful because your place might be the next.

Constitution of Turkey دستور تركيا

404 out of 550 members of the Turkish parliment voted for a constitutional change that says "no one can be denied the right of education", This means the girls in Muslim Turky can now attend universities wearing vales. We are are so happy with this victory against the evil.

صوت 404 من أصل 550 نائب في البرلمان التركي لصالح تعديل الدستور، بإضافة عبارة تفيد بأنه لا يمكن حرمان أحد من حقه في التعلم، وبذلك تتمكن الفتيات التركيات المسلمات من دخول الجامعات مرتديات الحجاب الإسلامي، وللعلم فقد تلقت بنتا السيد رجب طيب أردوجان، رئيس الوزراء، تعليمهن الجامعي في أمريكا بسبب هذا الحظر، كما أن زوجته أمينة وزوجة فخامة الرئيس د. عبدالله جول خير النساء ترتديان الحجاب، فمباركة عودة تركيا لجادة الصواب

NO ! to 11 Millions (Click)

Dr. Ryuta Kawashima, the brain behind the "Brain Age" Nintendo game, just loves to work; he used the proceeds to help fund $6.5 million in construction projects on Tohoku's campus. He says: I just love to work and if you like money gout out and get it ...

I love work too, but I love money three ...., read to pay respect (or get pissed off !)

Microsoft Beer (Click)

Beer Free World ... toward that, Bill Gates of Microsoft buyes 392 Million USD worth of Beer (I mean shares in a Beer Company), in a step people think he will screw it up to the extent that people will quit it.

He hopes it works, and they dont switch to something worse, read more

Not again ... !

I am afraid that Ship Master (yeah, the drunk ...) is going to make a record number of damages to the submarine optical fibre, after FLAG in Alexandria and FLAG in Dubai, ...

The Iternet is so slow again; My 512 Kbps connection is struggling; down to 10 Kbps ...

Egypt; an influential country in the middle east

Jan. 30, 2008: the internet services were widely disrupted in the Middle East and in the Indian subcontinent following damage to the SEA-ME-WE 4 (near Marseille, France) and FLAG (near Alexandria, Egypt) cables in the Mediterranean Sea. Problems were reported in Bahrain, Bangladesh, Kuwait, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. The news did not mention Jordan as part of the list; its peopele have been suffering to full addiction, even long before the damage, and after it was fixed (thanks to Orange Jordan).

Network outage graphs suggest that the two breaks occurred at 0430 and 0800 UTC. FLAG was damaged by a ship anchor in Alexandria, Egypt. And on Feb 1st, 2008, FLAG was reported damaged about 100 Km from Dubai.

This suggests that the ship speed is nearly 130 Km/h; too fast for a big ship knowing that the record world water speed is 511 Km/h (this is of course if we assume it was the same ship !)

A girl's letter bounce (Click)

Unlike my Orange outgoing mail server, which bounces good deal of the email letters almost immediately and without reason, a letter from a 6-year girl sent into the skies was returned after 15 years and by a fish, suggesting that a fish is better than an orange (this is truly against my belief as a vegetarian)

Shirahige is now 21-year university student, and the link has more

Kindle's style ...

Foldable bracelet and time machine in style, walk to energise it, and get proud of that ..