another man's life

Feeding friends

2009-02-28T14:12:00.005+02:00

A long time ago since I updated this corner of the web. I was busy with many things in life, including changing a whole system of life and upgrading my ideas to other levels of imagination and creativity. According to these profound I find that updating this blog with long posts is not a wise idea.

I tried to search for other ways to communicate with friends over around the world. First I thought of switching to micro-blogging. Services like twitter and identi.ca are a very good solutions for fast updates and sharing stories with nice way to integrate with SMS and other technologies. The problem that all my networks is strongly based on using on gmail :). I tried to find service that can link Google Talk status to identi.ca and then another tool to make the same between identi.ca and this blog [so it can be updated regulary].

I found that the services available nowadays are great by themselves, but they are not integrated too much. I talked with Sinan about how efficient to make an application that link any two web2 applications in the way user wants. One of the problems that this idea may face that there is no clear model of revenue. However, we have to bear in mind that services like twitter and facebook did not have a clear model of revenue for the near past. Moreover, there are many other complications that we have nowadays in the web2 applications; not all terms of use and license agreements are friendly to share content or cooperate with others and these concerns are not new which forced facebook, the largest social network on the web, to open its terms of use and philosophy of management to its users.

Anyway, it seems that making an upper layer that we can bring all services to is a good solution in the time being. FriendFeed is the results of my searches, let us firstly pray for RSS [God bless RSS]. Using RSS FriendFeed can bring all your news and activities in the web in one shot, somehow in the facebook way and open them to all your friends who can comment, share and subscribe to. I can say that it is a more generalized form of micro-blogging and has many similarities with facebook way of thinking. I think FriendFeed is mature to test, has clean interface and less crowded than facebook. I am not sure if I will continue to use FriendFeed for a long time but I can say I am happy with it [at least I can save my Google talk status in a twitter-way]. To subscribe or comment on my life please visit http://friendfeed.com/abosamoor

الحذاء

2008-12-23T00:26:00.003+02:00

حذائك حذائك من لا حذاء له كساع الى اللقا* بغير سؤال

اللقا ترخيم اللقاء*

to be updated later, when I learn how to support arabic in blogger. By the way I am thinking of switching to wordpress. :)

TOEFL writing

2008-10-24T18:18:00.004+03:00

Languages are not the best to mention when it comes to my capabilities and English language is not an exception. I believe that languages are designed to be a tool for communication and not a target. So I think as a not interested person, learning languages to the level that you can deliver your ideas is an enough. Moreover, knowing universal languages like mathematics and music is another reason for scientific person not to pay that attention to arts men.

However, as you know to improve your chances in future plans sometimes you have to pass few silly roads. TOEFL and GRE are the best examples for silly exams that play an essential role in your completing your graduate studies plans. I did the GRE in the last year summer. The Quantitative part was really humble but the verbal was another language different than we know as an English language. For TOEFL it is controllable test, I mean as you prepare yourself as you get. I tried to do some trainings and the Barrons CD was the best source with its seven fake exams.

Part of the training was to write articles that explain your opinions in 'usual' life issues and reports about what you heard or listened to. Because my writings may be look long I just embedded them instead of pasting here.

80%

2008-10-04T04:28:00.004+03:00

I heard the new facts about the admission of University of Jordan, two of them made my brain working for minutes, let us look at them:

80% of the semaphores are females
~70 of semaphores were accepted under the parallel program.

I don't want to discuss the second fact because it has no surprise the education system loosed the justice and the equality of opportunities a long time ago. The best I can say about the admission policies that they present a corrupted system with all types of bugs and flaws :(.

The new fact is about the percentage of females. Yes, the percentage of the females in UJ is always high and the highest in the Jordanian Universities, my deductions are as follow:

The nature of the General Secondary Exam in Jordan in the recent years made dangerous flaws, the material given to scientific stream students nowadays is focusing on the human sciences which take large part of the GPA. You can see that 41% of the total scores is for Math and scientific course which maybe biology and geology, the two topics are not that challenging ones and based on memorizing the knowledge written in books. So we see that most of students are really evaluated in 20% of the total scores while larger weight is given for courses are not related to the real science understanding and its innovative criticism and thinking. The questions are another story. Nearly all of them are trivial, the questions depend on how much you spent hours memorizing silly stuff, no challenging problems, no evaluation for problem solving techniques skills, and testing for real understanding. From my point of view girls are better in some skills, the ones that the general exam gives nowadays the decisive weight ! Guys as I think are better in other skills like problem solving, inspiring solutions and worse in memorizing and making the art of spending time on such boring missions in a perfect way ;).
Due to the social conscious, parents prefer to send their sons to universities that near their homes. But when no near university is available, parents go to the parallel option and here girls and guys are distinguished. For parents keeping their daughters near is more important than money, so they decide to follow the parallel program searching for nearer university. It is obvious that it is not the case for guys, cheaper fees is more important in such case. Bearing in mind that University of Jordan is in the capital, which contains more than half of the population combined with districts and near cities,Zarqa and Madaba, makes it preferable by a large section of families.

Democracy* !!!

2008-09-30T03:13:00.006+03:00

I did not think that I will return to such topic, The University of Jordan. But the insistence I faced by a friend in persuading me that there is a new trend in University of Jordan put me in critical place.

As you may know there are discussions** about thenew laws for the elections in University of Jordan. The new laws will allow students to elect all the officers of the students council. Let me in the next sections analyze the situation as I see.

During my study in JU, I monitored the status of the students' councils. The assignment policy, the weak chairmen and the consecutive unjust laws which makes the council a weak entity without real authorities to control. During the years the students' councils at their best time played the role of being a good managers of the presidency's policies. The problem in University of Jordan is in its unique culture, position and students. The demographic and geographic facts made freedom and democracy hard to be understood by the real effective offices in UJ.

So why do you think I have to believe in such changes ?

The near past tell me that Dr. Khaled Karaki was the man who canceled the students clubs, and postponed the elections a whole year !
The laws that the council must operate under are unjust to the level that any council with free will can not make any real changes.
Dr. Adnan Badran the man who asked for new law in UJ was the prime minister in Jordan few years ago, and in that time he had greater influence to change! If he is really believe in such change why he did not make it before. By the way we can expect a very hard time for Jordan Human Rights center with the administration of weak [compared to Obeidat] charisma like the one badran has.
I can not believe in any changes while the security mentality dominated our thinking and actions, what about the intelligence office in UJ ?
As I see the people who will make the change were capable to do so before, so why now ? is it just a response to the King visit ??? If yes, we can see that there is no systematic work in our life and there is no real change in mentalities to make the change momentum going on.
What about the board that was created to discuss the new law, five students I don't know how did they choose them ! It was better to select elected students from previous councils, what about the doctors ??? I don't want to continue I think if we investigate the details of the selection we will discover a shameful process
There is no real diffusion toward democracy in Jordan, unless you believe in the displacement in order of millimeters. The new laws for multimedia and press, the Internet monitoring policy, the voting law, the university admission policies, alghad tv problem and many more examples of how we understand the democracy don't allow me to believe that UJ will make an oasis in the desert.

This step was made after they know that any new council won't make any real change because they control all the rules of the game, and the failure of the next council will achieve their target of loosing the hope of democracy for the Jordanians. All in all, I hate obfuscation; don't talk about real changes unless you see them.

*Before anything to be discussed I hope that my opinions are wrong and not related to the new facts !
** You may find these resources useful:

http://www.alghad.jo/?news=362766
http://www.360east.com/?p=1053
http://naydynmoody.blogspot.com/2008/09/next-big-conversation.html

MIND THE GAP

2008-09-06T14:42:00.004+03:00

So I make it again, although I hoped to make the next trip to the Christ the Redeemer. I really enjoyed my first time in London, large city with international identity makes your excitement of different type. Everything is mixed the capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, democracy, and monarchy in one place !!!

I want just to mention the places I visited:

British Museum
Museum of London
National Gallery Museum
Sherlock Holmes Museum
Rare things Museum
Royal Secrets Museums
Time Museum
St James Park
Hyde Park
Greenwich observatory
Buckingham Palace
Royal Mews
Covent Garden
Big Ben
Houses of Parliament
St Paul Cathedral
Millennium Bridge
Tower Bridge
Soho Street

I passed by:
City Hall
Tower of London
Royal Court
BBC
Imperial College
Shakespeare Globe Theater
Westminster Abbey
10 Downing Street
London Eye
Bank of England

I used:
Double Decker buses
Modern 'bendy' bus
train
boat for the Thames trip.

I am not sure if I listed all the places, I will update it if there is anything missing :)

Sport Industry

2008-09-06T13:22:00.003+03:00

I watched the opening of the Beijing Olympic games that Friday, it was fascinating and wonderful. I know Chinese very well when it comes to size and mass production, so their target in the Olympics was clear "make it the largest". Yes, China spent a lot of work, time, and minds to make it happened as it was, one of the best Olympics ever made.

The size of participation was amazing, the countries were more than those in the United Nations! , the world leaders and presidents were about 100 !! and the Chinese Olympic team was over the one thousand !!! With the end of the Olympics China met its promises to make Beijing the city where the new Master will enter the world in all the fields starting with the sports. We can not say that 100 leader will attend the opening of the Olympics because they are interested in the sport or in the message of peace that Olympics spread among the nations, I hope I am wrong that Bush is not the one who is killing children in Iraq, Palestine ..., and HuJinTao is not the man who prohibit billions from their essential freedoms. Beijing Olympics was another field were nations are fighting for domination and victory!

A look at the Arabic teams, we can find some players here and there. With their personal efforts are trying to compete with the will of countries and nations. The Arabic sport teams participation are meaningless, because such events are for the strong countries who wants to show its soft power, while we are in the Arab world far away from achieving our basic needs like sovereignty and citizens rights. I know that the money paid for such participation are part of the internal propaganda about the local achievements. I hope those who are responsible on the sports in the Arab world, stop this cynical play. We are not part of the sport industry at all, and we should not because we don't have any message to deliver to others. All know how much we are weak.

I think the best practice we can do is to pay such money on the public awareness of sport and not on expensive professional Olympic teams traveling around the world. We lack all the facilities needed for a public sport culture, when I searched for a place to play ping pong I found that all the supported facilities are booked to the competitions, clubs and the national team.

We misunderstood the meaning of sport, sport is not for creating super heroes; athletes can not be faster than rockets, wrestlers can not be stronger than trucks. Improving human body by these sports to its limits had an advantage in the past when the war and body to body fighting needs the best qualifications. But now technology replaces everything, so we have to focus on the general people's performance, their awareness of fit and sport. We want generations without fat and laziness, healthy bodies are essential to any nation productivity. So we need the money to be paid back to the people by setting up new facilities that guarantee "SPORT for ALL".

Anyway I am in mission to test the British preparation for the Olympics in 2012. my friend Mustafa said "Olympics can not go ahead without a tafillian visit" commenting on my visits to the construction sites of the Olympics in Beijing and London :).

An Old Guard

2008-08-09T16:58:00.011+03:00

Did you read the Communist manifesto ? Did you hear the Arabic speech in sixties ? we all think that the holistic systems gone with the wind in a world that internet and technical tools make it impossible to hide the truth away from people's mind. I hope that situation as I said, but it seems that time is not running at the same speed everywhere !!! In University of Jordan as in all the third world countries we are living an era of "The Great Leader". Prof. Khaled Karaki with his charisma and cleverness present the ideal Bolshevik leader and the radical rebellious. He believes in his capabilities and ideas, the weak team he works with, allow him to achieve his vision away from daily feedback or notices that he is pretending to hear.

Yes, he made good changes and he is clever to do the right thing many times, but it's not the neuron, it's the neural system which allow you to think and innovate. The work and the decision making paradigm we see University of Jordan represent a good example for blind policies built upon old ideologies. All things must be done and validated after the acceptance of the president, and none can talk about the University benefit and future outside his umbrella.

Yes, we hear, watch, eat, and breathe the Mr. PRESIDENT, like a star he is covering all the issues of the Students Voice newspaper [صوت الطلبة] and all the news is about him, 11/20 of the articles in the the latest issue of the newspaper talk about his achievements, vision and opinions. I am wondering if one man can do more than 50% of University work, why don't we hire two or three more and make the best university in Middle East !!! and by the way i counted more than 4 photos for Mr. President, my question is why we don't put one and reference to in the following articles and news, this newspaper is colored and I think this suggestion will save a good amount of money in our rich university, at least let us make it one photo for the sake of environment :P. By the way this newspaper called Students' Voice don't have any student in its editorial board staff, and the remaining articles 9/20 are left to students to fill with poems, cross words, Sudoku ... !!!

After a lot of study and following the updates in University of Jordan, we can notice that the current policy emulates an art image for a poet more than being built on real studies for needs. We can notice the expensive changes for the decorate of the General Library, and especially for the library chairman and her vice-chair offices, they have large nice offices covered by glass and wood while the library capacity is smaller than the increased students' number accepted every year. And this reflects on all aspects, we have everyday more gardens, flowers, speeches and less quality of study and learning, freedom, and services for students. The current policy simulate the steel curtains policy for the USSR 20 years ago, the following is a small list for the events that prove my argument, please add any missing policies:

1-Postponing the elections:

Since the beginning Prof. Khaled knew the elections problem in UJ, and he had a year to trigger the process to create new laws, but he preferred to use the Jordanian way in solving such rights. The new Jordanian law for parliament elections postponed for more than fifteen years since 1989, till we get a bad law under a weak parliament elected with the same old laws which enhance ignorance and tribal forces. Mr. President made the same , he announced the postponing of the elections to the next year, to make a new one. And to make students happy he announced the new law will be without appointment .I don't have to make any extra efforts to prove that these announcements are such marketing propaganda.I bet that no elections will be held in his tenure.

2-Closing the students clubs

And after the gap happened in the students representation, Mr. President continued his policy in canceling any students rights by closing the students clubs, the ones which won't make any decision without his acceptance !!!

3-Internet censorship

To increase the efficiency of the steel curtains, Mr. President saw that students are young to see the world and its change, and under the fake explanations about the bandwidth limitations, they blocked most of the internet with their stupid filter, and with the proxy server all the traffic is monitored :(. You know the parents know better, and we are after 22 years of living in this country we don't have the right to spend our time as we want, and believe in what we love. This filter costs the university about 8000 JD, and I am wondering if they bought it from China, Iran or KSA !!!

As an observer and chairman of the remaining student entity [IEEE UJ Branch], I believe that Jordanian Youth deserve more this narrow vision for freedom, democracy.

Mental cleansing

2008-07-21T14:31:00.005+03:00

As a single man, I love freedom. And I think I will defend mine to the last drop I have. I am not fond of social relationships and staying with families. Being alone is something amazing, you just stare at the walls discovering those new areas of your mind and thinking. Actually I think those who were put in individual jail rooms, have great opportunity to take that journey.

So going to Tafila has nothing to do with emotions or my reputation to the social bonds, I just try to make another practice to reach my nirvana. The last week was wonderful, I went on Thursday night, moon was complete and the silence was the master along the road, something rarely happened on the Tafila transportation means. Desert and the full moon was enough to feel the new person inside your tired body. I am lying if I claim that I can describe such scene.

Anyway, my trip did not stop at that limit, as default I was welcomed with hot tea, delicious supper. I slept after talking with dad, those talks which began with investigating the current situation of the middle east region, and ending with my future plans till the next visit, visit usually happen every four months.

Friday was my second day:

I woke up at 8:00 am for breakfast
9:00am -1:30 pm sleeping
1:30pm-2:30pm The promised Mansaf which was = جدي بلدي+ لبن سريح+ شراك بلدي. For any person of AL-Rfou' tribe, mansaf is a holy meal which represent a ceremony that all have to celebrate by sleeping. I slept after this Nuclear War to
2:30pm-9:00pm, sleeping
9:00pm-00:00am I woke up to drink some tea.
00:00-8:00 am sleeping, woke up to get another bus returning to my home in Amman.

Spending 18 hours sleeping and eating such Mansaf guarantee a clean mind that shine night and day. I can feel now how much Mansaf was a great invention, my anscestors kept secret for decades, so it's only Jordnaians who can have the nice "Kashra" and the snappy mood.

Night in Amman

2008-07-13T13:52:00.006+03:00

As always Amman is hot and boring in summer, not a lot to do although Jordan festival is running out there. Such parties for Arab pop singers do not fit for me or my friends. Last Friday we were bored and depressed, so we decided to go outside without any clear plans.

We began our tour from sefen on the north gate of the University of Jordan, then we headed to After 8 pub [it opens after 5 :P ] in Jabal Amman for Pepsi and Beer. This pub was nice with a decorate like a Russian train from the nineteenth century, everything is covered with wood. The small cabinets with candles gave you a real impression.

Guys felt hungry and it was not hard to see the answer. For sure, it's Abo Zad on the AlMadina Circle. Grilled Chicken and some Shawarma was enough as a second supper. I suggested to go to a place with open atmosphere, Marwan guided us to a high place near The Performing Arts Center we parked the car there and tried to concentrate in that sky without stars !!! while Mustafa tried to search for his favorite song in the car flash modulator.

Suddenly a car with high falshes came , two men shouted "What are you doing here ?", "Hey, come on", "Give me your civil ID". They were from the Criminal Investigations, we showed them our IDs.

-"Were you put in jail before ?", the officer asked
-Marwan laughed and we followed him
-"I am not joking", the officer shouted
-"Are you drinking", the officer asked
-"Yes", Marwan replied
-"What are you dirnking ?", he inquired
-"Water and Pepsi", marwan replied

The officer and his assistant became very angry, they asked us about age, work, where we are living, why are staying there ?.
Five minutes went to discover that we are such normal people, so the officer decided not to go much further.So we returned to the car continue our searching for Mustafa's favorite song "Ya Sahar Alyali" for Fairooz. His flash memory had 161 song and we are still discovered 50 :(

Another car came but this time it has a Qatari sign, the glasses were black so you can not see who is inside, it stopped 30 meters away and the break lights were still on for 5 minutes !!! [the driver was in tense position :P], we got curious to know it is going inside so waited till the car begin shaking, the car's break lights went off. And while we are watching another car come, four men were aboard the surrounded our car and asked us to leave the car, they were also from the Criminal Investigations, i had a Swiss army knife in my pocket so i got afraid of that, you know those guys love to make stories out of nothing so they maybe try to make my knife another automatic fire gun !!!

The Qatari car left the place after all this mess, none talked to that car. One of the officers said "God bless them". Some questions and they left us to continue our searching for the song, yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees it's 136 , wow we found it :).

It was 3:30 am so I left the guys, they were talking about going to Rama, a night club opens at 3:00 am !!!

JoVision

2008-07-09T00:37:00.006+03:00

I am working now in Jovision as part of the required training for Engineering students, as a start-up company we here have great expectations, and huge ambitions to make a story of glory. Not only for the company benefit, but as a proof that we can do it here in Jordan.

Jovision is an initiative for Dr. Islam Shodaifat to build a new industry in Jordan, based on working in Image Processing field. With the edge technologies used Jovision hope to get its leading place in Non Destructive Testing Industry.

The bet was made upon the Jordanian Engineers to make the difference, work is being done in a calm, productive and challenging environment. C#, matlab are our preferred tools to play with. The first product targets the tires manufacturing quality and safety management. Our proposed markets will be Germany, China and Japan.

Talking more in the future, leaving the keyboard to make a brainstorming session with the guys. :)

not Too Much Politics

2008-07-02T00:02:00.004+03:00

History has many stories to tell. Yes, they are not that different but they are not the same. The story of colonialism is not a new one, and we think the answer and the end is well known for the audience. But if you are aware enough, you will notice that it is not the case in Arab World, we are still illiterate !!!

Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt two years ago stand with Israel against the resistance in Lebanon and Palestine. I am sure they were honest in their decisions, trying to avoid the region another war and continue their pace in peace process. That was a mistake which did not want time or effort to prove how much was bad.

Nowadays, Hizbuallah is making a new contract with Israel to release Lebanese, Palestinian and Arab prisoners !!! Neither Saudi Arabia nor Egypt can do the same. Israel respects who deserve that, the one who knows his target very well, and work hard to achieve with power, and nothing other than power. I can see that Hizbullah is the only party in Arab World who represent the dignity and honor. Unfortunately, dignity and peace are not always in the same side, you have sometimes to make your life decision to get one of them.

Nations with dignity and sovereignty has history full of blood, wars and misery. Not because they hate Swiss way of life, but because it's the natural way to smelt the components, the problems and the challenges to create the new golden era for its residents. The American civil war, the Bolsheviks revolution and many other examples build the existence of global powers that dominates the world.

I am fond of politics, I was a good reader. Nowadays, I can say I'm good listener
to Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, the wise man of the Arab world, his talks are very calm and full of lessons. I am using the Aljazeera RSS, to fetch the .wma for downloading.

The motivation for writing this post was The following youtube video, which is an interview with Professor Norman Finkelstein, I hope you will enjoy this :)

A Year of Being Ubuntuer

2008-06-01T01:00:00.002+03:00

Wow, the first of June this year is special, a year ago I succeeded to move on toward my freedom. My story started in the beginning of 2005, when I tried for the first time to install Red Hat [I am not sure of the version], my first impression was that this whole thing is completely strange and complicated to learn. Trying SuSE a year after did not solve the problem, and yes Ubuntu is the one who made it. The obstacles I faced were due to my ignorance, which Proprietary Software is to be blamed for in part.

My enthusiasm was sourced by the powerful application I have been using since years, Firefox. My thought was if open source is powerful enough to come up with such a browser what about giving it a chance to master my machines. I decided after my Electromagnetic final exam [1/6/2007] to format my desktop and then install Ubuntu as the lone Operating System [No more XPs], because it's the only way to learn; when you face the fact you don't have any other solutions to live other than using Ubuntu.

After three days all my daily needs were solved, a lot of copy and paste from Ubuntu forums make things work. I was wondering when my machine will crash and I'm still waiting !!! If you want to ask me why I am still using Ubuntu, my strongest answer will be; because open source is just FUN. The software is owned by humanity and you are not under someone's authority. Throughout the year I learned a lot about my machines, the operating systems, the current IT industry standards, and the software engineering tools and their importance to make the collaboration of people over the seas possible and productive in the same time.

I hope the next year will be another year of being an Ubuntuer, in my first year I was a participant in #ubuntu channel, blogger about ubuntu users' issues and problems, persuading my colleagues to switch to Ubuntu, a founder of The Jordanian Ubuntu LoCo team, and making initiatives to adopt Linux in Jordan education system. But this year I hope that my participation will be different, being a maintainer or even a developer for an open source project is not an easy mission, it needs a lot of passion and determination. However, I believe in the importance of this step for the benefit of the community and the process of upgrading my skills.

I know all of that won't be sufficient for the non technical persons to switch to Linux, or open source in general. But bear in mind if you believe in freedom, the availability of knowledge for all, better future, or new and good jobs for your friends you have to support open source and there are many ways to do that.

Best of wishes extended to all those developers who devoted their lives and gave their best efforts to provide me and millions others with the opportunity to use high end Software, and yes for freeDom.

--Ramy Eid

Failure after failure

2008-05-30T03:15:00.003+03:00

I can not imagine that the first half of 2008 will disastrous as it is :(. All my plans to get an internship outside Jordan for this semester failed. Not only that even the contests and tests, i took in the spring semester, were passed with my weak breathes.

After four years of loss I can not find the clear target i was aiming at when i was a freshman, i have to admit that the Factory of Cartoons made its magic on my soul and spirits, i have to prepare my plan very well to recover of its negative and side effects which may last for another four years.

All guys around feel sad, depressed and tired. It is not that they want to graduate, but it's the feeling how much it was unjust to spoil your young years in such bad education systems, and vague social life. This is a discussion made months ago, reveals how much we are upset against all the imaginary facts that community wants to limit our dreams with.

This post was not supposed to be written, the previous post had a big impression which is not easy to forget, i still hear UmKulthum singing in my ears ... 60 was to say that we failed in the past. And this post comes to say that the present is not better, and my view is skepticism on the future.

I'm praying not to be drowned in another deep depression maze.

60

2008-05-16T13:32:00.004+03:00

It was a long time since it happened, sixty years is not that short period in the nations' age. 1948 was the year of Nakbeh, the year when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians left their home mandatorily forced by the Israeli terrorist gangs. The short war and the refuging movement was a clear evidence on the bad estimation that Arab;leaders and people have for the danger that Israel present for the Arab world, the crusaders story was not enough to learn :(.

After those six decades Israel becomes more monstrous artificial creature who lost his meaning of existence, and everyday with his increasing power, he reveals how much ugly he is. Those sixty years made the Palestinian people aware, stronger and have the devotion to restore the Arab rights in Palestine and Jerusalem.

This anniversary reminds me of the Palestinian prisoners in the Israeli prisons, who are standing in the front of the resistance to the western attack on the Arab Nation. It reminds me of those men and women who devoted their lives to defend Palestine and Arabic rights. I pray to God to bless them all, and to help us to move on their track.

I hope this will help our hearts:

Open Source Growing Exponentially

2008-04-25T18:36:00.006+03:00

Yesterday was the release of the Hardy Heron the second LTS release of Ubuntu after Dapper Drake.

I was wondering what will be the big difference separating Ubuntu 8.04 from Ubuntu 7.10 ??!! For the end user it's not always clear where the difference lies and where it is most important, so I tried to dig more into it. I started with the kernel; Gusty Gibbon [Ubuntu 7.10] had kernel 2.6.22, while Hardy Heron [Ubuntu LTS 8.04] had 2.6.24, I got some nice results :) [1]

Table 1 - Frequency of kernel releases Table

2 - Number of individual developers and employers

Table 3 - Individual kernel contributors

Table 4 - Companies working toward the improvement of the kernel

Figure 2 - Changes per kernel release

Figure 3 - Changes per hour by kernel release

Figure 4 - Size per kernel release

Figure 5 - Rate of change by kernel release

This lead me to uncover some interesting facts about the Open Source development progress. This is shown in a paper prepared by Amit Deshpande and Dirk Riehle [2], the researchers found that the Open Source projects double annually both in number of code lines and projects.

Software development is undergoing a major change away from a fully closed software process towards a process that incorporates open source software in products and services. Just how significant is that change? To an- swer this question we need to look at the overall growth of open source as well as its growth rate. In this paper, we quantitatively analyze the growth of more than 5000 active and popular open source software projects. We show that the total amount of source code as well as the total number of open source projects is growing at an exponential rate. Previous research showed linear and quad- ratic growth in lines of source code of individual open source projects. Our work shows that open source is expanding into new domains and applications at an exponential rate.

This research was comprehensive, to indicate the real status of Open Source World

For our analysis, we use the database of the open source analytics firm Ohloh.net, which has been crawling open source software code repositories since 2005 [11]. Our database snapshot contains 5122 active and popular open source pro- jects written in 30 different programming languages covering 103 open source li- censes. All data is updated on at least a weekly basis.

References:

Our Technology Parade Project

2008-04-21T03:03:00.002+03:00

A long time ago since i read for the first time about the technology parade, it was the last summer. Technology Parade is an initiative from Dr. Gheith Abandah the chair of the Computer Engineering Dept. in University of Jordan it aims to fill the gap between students and the current companies in Jordanian market by making ground for the companies to offer their projects to the interested students, which will open the good opportunities for jobs and internships. Beside all of that this national event will inspire students to build teams to work in a challenging atmosphere for solving problems by innovative solutions.

Since the beginning the comrades gathered to face the challenge, and after many mind storm sessions, we come up with nothing satisfying our capabilities and ambitions, but after some good efforts we tried to think with some reality, and decided to build a low cost, portable digital oscilloscope the application which will solve the humanity problems, and beside its main targets, it will release us from the authority of the lab supervisors and their old, buggy, shaky devices that was imported in sixties from Alice's wonderlands :P.

So the problems began, we made nice designs, allot of features added to the project till we made a proposal with five milestones !!! We decided to try ship and shop from Aramex to get the components, the prices on the internet open our greed, so we ordered many cheap things. And they were working but without documentation so they become useless, so more of time wasted on such things.

However, ordering again and again, we spend time and money. [I have to close the money topic, guys want their money :P]. Lastly we bought a dsPIC with 20 JDs while it's on the internet costs about 7$, and the LCD with 35 JDs, on the internet it's about 20$.

Then we divided into two groups one for the display section [Me and Mohammad] and the another one [Waleed and Sinan] to play with the ADC. As usual we did our work within 3 days, and in the last hour before the deadline we get a working oscilloscope.

The comrades:

Waleed Tuffaha
Sinan Taifour
Mohammad Eyad
aboSamoor [me ya ahbal :P]

last word don't try to make anything by hardware that will come over the seas, i love to work with the software; the infrastructure is cheap and easy to build.

If you are interested in the pre-final version of our report :P
look HERE

Religion, IEEE and Science: Presentations i made

2008-04-14T20:07:00.008+03:00

Making presentations with Google Docs, is awesome. And sharing them is also another story.
Enjoy READING + Sharing , They are under GFDL :P.

1- This presentation made a long hot debate last year, to see how much big this controversial topic is, visit my discussions here

2- As IEEE Chairman i made with the comrades a nice Introductory Lecture about IEEE, and this presentation was part of that lecture. if you want to know more, try to visit our website : www.ju-ieee.com

3-This is a new one for Distributed Systems course :)

Thinking of Christ the Redeemer

2008-04-07T22:23:00.009+03:00

In the last October i was in China, accompanying His Majesty King Abd Allah the second in his state visit to China. As part of the Jordanian diplomatic delegation. it was wonderful week, and it was a unique experience to represent your country in the first time you are out. Between it was also my first time to be on board an airplane, many, many thing have to be said...

After six of my visit to the Great Wall, i visited with my friends the second world modern wonder Petra

I'm thinking now, where i can be after another six months, is it Christ the Redeemer or Pyramids, what about being in Amman playing in Jordan University !!!

Welcome Ahmad

2008-04-02T23:51:00.004+03:00

:)
Today is one of the best, Ahmad will join us, yay. Ahmad is my new brother he is still fresh and young to know how much is our family has exciting life. Yup, I'm eager to return to Tafila to see him, i asked them how much he is related to me, they said not too much, and this is a plus :P

Ahmad is a new name for our family, we are not familiar with religious names, but it seems that there are new trends to make things quiet with more traditional way of living, however, Ahmad always remind me of good people who have big hearts and great minds.

I hope that in your time blogs will remain, so you can read how much I'm excited to get a new brother while I'm 22 years old, and then don't forget your eldest brother who may be anywhere around the world or in skies.

Brother, don't forget that you don't have any prime number greater than 2 in your birth date :P, it's all divisible by 2 , 2/4/2008, but you can note the pattern in 2,4,8 ... so enjoy increasing capital with fruitful work ... Fortune Teller

Your Brother.

ramy's book of wisdom

2008-03-30T02:04:00.003+03:00

This is just a beginning :)

Who does not want ramy, ramy does not want.
Math just rocks.
Being awake won't shorten your life, and sleeping won't lengthen it
You can not wait for girls to think.
Math rocks for all values of {t, (x,y,z)}
It's not who votes, it's who count the votes ... Anonymous
Girls' spirits live longer than any Duracell battery.
You return as human after eating, sleeping,making love, and taking shower, but after thinking you won't stop flying away.
If you have twice the time to live, you will do the half you did.

for updates version please try this link

AndFaraway !!!

2008-03-10T16:55:00.005+02:00

Blogging, Bloggers, ...
I have to say that I'm newbie to this field, this is just my third post on another man's life blog, i had a previous experience with Linux Lab. Subscribing here and there, searching for Jordanian bloggers i found a new type community lives here in the cyber space, after reading for good for some of them, i just discovered that tey most of them know each other very well.

In fact i loved some of the blogs like that one 360east, it's short and informative about the IT section in Jordan and Hareeja
Most of my favorites belong to the open source enthusiasts :

Yes, it's free for everyone to write anything he wants, but i'm wondering why some blogs like andfaraway for Roba alas gets all that traffic, i subscribed to her blog for two months, and most of the posts were around digg high scored stories, i don't think that blogs are the best way to spread stories, there are many tagging and social networks to spread stories !!!

My best way to share my friends with nice stories or news is Google Reader, using that you can share your friends with your lovely stories, you read from your subscribtions, so everybody get notified about that.
I think blogs are more about personal experiences and opinions rather than making it a place for news.

My advice not to subscribe to such blogs, try sladshdot or digg for larger and better News database ;)

My driving license story

2008-03-04T15:25:00.004+02:00

Wow, eventually i got the driving license on the first of march, this is a very nice event for celebrating.Thank God i will never see those policemen again for another five years.

When i started my long trip to get the license i did not think it will pain like that. I began in 20/7/2007, during the next 3 months i took around 30 hours of training, and for the next months i took 10 hours. It was a nice experience to take trip everyday to Salt, Fuheis, Eldowar 5->8, Baq3a and Yajooz. But in the financial aspect it was a disaster, every lesson costs 4.5 JD which lasts for 50 minutes, and this was from history , lesson nowadays costs at minimum costs 6 JDs. However, i took the theoretical test twice, in the first time i got 78/100 and in the second 86/100.

After that comes the practical part, i did it twice before passing, that made me depressed, it's the first time to fail in that manner, my problem that you can't simulate the environment of the exam outside the test itself, it's not like my previous experiences; academic exams are easier you can get any bunch of questions in any time without any problem to start solving them. In our case, i don't have the permission to drive a car outside, and i don't have any near to do so if i want break the laws. The training is not efficient because there is the man who every time spoils your experience by interfering your way of driving. So, you have to take the exams more than once to get used to its system.

I don't think the current system of driving examination is efficient in any way, i hope that others can find any more interactive method for learning driving. so they don't struggle with such stupid system.

In fact after passing in that sunny day, and after standing under the sun and rain for more than 3 hours i felt for one of the few times, how is passing an exam is a pleasurable thing, passing in the past was a default value for me. but not after the driving tests.

Rough Estimation of the Driving test cost

40 * 4.5 = 180 JD //costs of training
2 * 5 = 10 JD //costs of theoretical tests
3 * (3.20 + 10)= 40 JD //costs of practical tests
18 JD fees for license
18 JD fees for registering papers

Total costs = 10+180+40 + 36 = 268 JD
*Fees for training for lessons are 6 JD instead of 4.5 JD
**Fees for practical test is (4+10) instead of (3.2+10)

Aljazeera + Youtube !!!

2008-03-01T23:10:00.001+02:00

I always doubt about the abilities for Arab to make real good achievements, i see in them, in worst case, normal people as part of the natural distribution of capabilities and characteristics among human beings. I think they are smart but not patient to achieve. [You can notice the generalisation in my opinion, it does not represent a fact or theorem, it just my feelings].

Aljazeera provide one of the few exceptions to my feelings, i see there, a nice example of innovation, devotion, and professionalism. My explanation to the Aljazeera success is that in more than ten years ago, some professional arab workers in media sector [most of them were from BBC radio arabic service, which till now i'm fond of] dreamed in delivering a new class of media services to the Arab world. I know that there are allot of external factor to provide a shelter for such high level of freedom for broadcasting, but as i see the important thing is that team of brilliant people who want Aljazeera to be as it is nowadays.

Many times i noticed how much the electronic services of aljazeera were very week, and loosely integrated; In Arabic [rad 3atab := doing for just to said it's done]. You can not get a comprehensive, integrated, and easy to get archive in their websites [compare that to the BBC services encyclopaedia]. Very little material is presented in their website, you can not watch live broadcasting even in low quality. And the worst thing is the user experience, where you have to wait for minutes to get complete loaded homepage, because of this bad flashy style of service, many Ads and heavy flashes, Can anyone explain why ? this is contradicting with facts of the bad and low bandwidth internet services in the Arabic world.

BBC Arabic tv broadcasting is opening in 11/3/2008, which will begin a new competitor for Aljazeera. This makes me happy because will bring Aljazeera to a higher level of performance and professionalism. BBC is a hard and strong opponent who will introduce the region to a new era of media, and scope of discussion and analysis to the challenges we face.

I dream of the day that Aljazeera will be one of the two widest broadcasting services in the world, and hoping that we will see in the next decades companies, businesses, and projects start from the Arabic World that will lead the human civilisation growth and trends.