Abed Hamdan

Interesting article, click here to read…

http://www.khabbr.com/

A new website, by Jeeran! Arabized version of Digg, and more.

Sun Microsystems is changing the face of the planet, again.

Read More…

Soft-core porn site (***) is suing Microsoft, claiming that the MSN search engine is providing links and images to sites that are illegally hosting its content.

Microsoft is not the company’s first target, as it recently lost similar cases against Google, Amazon and A9 search, all of which it is appealing.

The suit was filed on Tuesday in a California district court and alleges that the MSN image search engine creates unauthorised thumbnails of Perfect 10’s premium content, as well as including links to see full-size versions of the images for free.

Read More…

It’s been a week and I don’t have any sort of internet connection

Jordan Telecom is to blame! but you know what, life can be joyous without internet! lord knows how I miss you all my friends

I’m still offline, blogging from an internet cafe is a new experience!

anyway, I will publish some of my old drafts, and do forgive me for not visiting your blogs or being late in replying your valuable comments. We should strike Jordan Telecomm

So finally I got the time to write about this special event. I had the pleasure of attending and contributing to the first international “Digital Communications and Computer Applications” conference in Jordan.

First Day:

The opening ceremony took place at Jordan University of Science and Technology (my university!), with the prescence of the minister of higher education, and the distinguished guests from all over the world ! It was a life time opportunity, to meet professors from all over the world who have Published Papers on different topics related to communications and computer applications.

The ceremony started by the national anthem, holy quran, speeches by the deans, university president, and the minister of higher education.

After that, we went for a coffee break, where we had the chance to talk to the guests. There, I talked to the team of Czech Republic. They have some amazing work in solar energy, data compression, software engineering modeling, and image processing in general.

After the long interesting coffee break, concurrent sessions took place at the “c sqaure” rooms, where each guest presented his published paper and an open discussion regarding his paper followed the presentation.

Second Day:

At 8:00 AM, the Jordan University of Science and Technology team gathered and took a bus to Jordan Intercontinental hotel, where everybody was busy attending another set of concurrent sessions and presentations by the guests. New topics for the second days. I attented the Image Processing, Computer Security, Data Communication and Computer Networks presentations.

At the coffee break, we decided to pay a visit for the “WebIT” exhibition at the ground floor of the same hotel.

A very fortunate surprise was waiting us there; it was the meeting of the fabulous team of Jeeran.com !! Jeeran is the first and the most popular company in the arab world that provides blogging servies. Jeeran is a leading company, proudly Jordanian, run by a young promising team. I had the pleasure of meeting some fellow bloggers who works for Jeeran : 7ala, Wedad, and Laith Zraikat.

Not to mention the team of Talasim.com (Zaid Qudosi) , and the blogger/photographer Sabri Hakim ( SabriHakim.com ).

Oh wait, there are more surprises !!

The post is too long already, so I will write about the most interesting team in the DCCA conference, Microsoft Windows Vista presentation and the new service of Jeeran in the next post of mine.

Actually, I met a phenomenon, a God Power. I won’t talk much about him now, but it’s enough to say for now that the title of his paper was to “Proving the Noor of Allah in the distingueshed and unique vowels of Qur’an”. He is muslim, but oddly enough, HE IS NOT AN ARAB.

to be continued…

http://ayaalmusa.blogspot.com < == this blog, “aya almusa” is hacked,

don’t visit the blog , it will redirect you to a malicious website that will install a virus (trojan horse) on your computer…

I’ve noticed that most Egyptians are only aware of Ahmad Zewail as a noticable famous scientist because of his Nobel prize in Chemistry.

If you haven’t heared of the outstanding Egyptian-American cryptographer Taher El Gamal, then I suggest you go read his biography here.

The ElGamal algorithm is now used in the free GNU Privacy Guard software, recent versions of PGP, and other cryptosystems.

Miss “Annousheh Ansari”, who was born in Iran but later became a US citizen, is the fourth ever space tourist and the first female space tourist has landed to Earth today.

The capsule carrying Anousheh Ansari as well as crew members from the US and Russia touched down in Kazakhstan early today.

In a statement from space tourism firm Space Adventures, Ms Ansrari was quoted as saying the $25 million trip had exceeded her expectations.

She said:

The experience was more than I had ever imagined. Seeing the Earth from space will be forever etched in my mind. (Hat tip: RTE News )

Space Blog inspires thousands:
The world’s first female space tourist says space smells like a “burned almond cookie”, praises the wonders of Velcro, and finds washing her hair in zero gravity hazardous. (Hat tip: SBS News )

Burned Almond Cookie ?? lol
Women!!!

I visited her blog, she wrote about her 10 days experience in space, and she was live blogging from the space! Click here to go to her blog.

So $25 million to visit the space ?? Hmm, I think I should start saving! *sigh*

+ Full Story in Arabic here

+ Full Story in English here

Can anybody give a clue about this MySpace thingy? I received many invitations to join it! It seems to be another lame matchmaking. Anyway, I finally signed up to test it, I know I will cancel it soon, just gimme a few weeks!

But on the other hand, I’ve noticed a wide variety of features on MySpace, It gives you a blog, music casting, and many other features, plus it’s the largest network online! weired , ain’t it?!

Click Here to view my profile!

The outstanding British astrophysicist Steven Hawking said that Humans must establish a base on the moon and colonize Mars within the next 40 years if we’re to avoid extinction from global warming or another catastrophe, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking said yesterday.

“It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species,” Hawking said at a news conference in Hong Kong.

“Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of.

“We won’t find anywhere as nice as Earth unless we go to another star system,” he added.

Space enthusiasts said Hawking’s vision is achievable.

“We’re pretty sure that everything we need to live is on Mars. There’s plenty of water and there’s a little bit of an atmosphere,” said Dr. David Robertson, director of the Center for Space Physiology and Medicine at Vanderbilt University.

Humans would likely live in a pressurized, temperature-controlled biosphere that could withstand the frigid nighttime temperatures and thin, dusty atmosphere.

“There’s no way you’d live without a space suit, even just to visit,” said Louis Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society.

Science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson said Hawking’s remarks were “a wasted opportunity.” “You want to treat this planet like the only one we have because Mars is poisonous,” he said.

Source [ NewYork Daily News ]

You know what?!

I trust Stephen Hawking, and I think he has a point!

I know you’ve noticed(Unless you’re blind) that I’m using Google Ads (Under Sponsored Links on the side bar)! If you still don’t know how these Ads work, then let me explain

These Ads are called context Ads. That is, Google places Ads that are relevant to the contents of your website. So how do these Ads work ??

Each time anyone clicks on these Ads, Google pays me money the amount of money per click depends on the link it selfs, I think It varies from $0.001 to $1 (this is the range I got). And each time anybody clicks on the Ads, the owner of the link should pay Google money. So Google wins! There are, of course, fraudal clicks made, and many complaints regarding these fraudal clicks.

According to the famous business rule “If you can’t beat ‘em, copy ‘em”, Yahoo has developed their own copy of these Ads (Yahoo Ads), also suffered from fraudal clicks! but, however, Google Ads still dominating the web, because they were the first who came up with the idea.

Today, e-Bay has a new idea. The same “Context Ads”, but this time, e-Bay will pay you money if and only if an action is taken (like purchasing), and this should be the solution to the fraudal clicks. Click Here or Click Here to read about e-Bay’s new Ads system.

Yes I made money out of Google Ads

A virus that infects computers when users merely read an email - rather than open an attachment - has hit Yahoo! Mail accounts.

Yahoo! is the world’s largest email services provider and handles 200 million accounts, but it said on Monday that only “a very small fraction” had been infected.

The worm has been dubbed Yamanner and landed in Yahoo! mailboxes bearing the subject line “New Graphic Site”. Once opened, the message infects the computer and spreads to other users listed in Yahoo! users’ email address books, security companies said.

The email containing the virus need only be opened - in contrast to most worms that are hidden in attachments and require users to take an additional step - to release the virus, according to computer security company Symantec.

The company advised users to update virus and firewall software on their computers and to block any email sent from av3@yahoo.com.

Yahoo! said in a statement: “We have taken steps to resolve the issue and protect our users from further attacks of this worm.”

Yamanner, first detected by Yahoo! and computer anti-virus software makers earlier on Monday, was ranked as having a low threat level by Trend Micro and McAfee.

But Symantec considers the worm an “elevated threat”, one step up from the lowest ranking in terms of relative danger.

Symantec’s Security Response site suggested that Yahoo! account holders might protect themselves by upgrading to the latest test version of the recently upgraded Yahoo! Mail software.

“The worm cannot run on the newest version of Yahoo! Mail Beta,” Symantec’s site said.

[ Read More ]

Source [ Al-Jazeera ]

I received this image in a Spam e-mail message !!

Why do I always have to get Viagra in a spam e-mails?? I get like thousands of these Viagras every week!

Congress is about to vote on the so-caled Net Neutrality !! Good thing , not ?

Click Here to watch a flash demo

Click Here for more information

It’s seems that my expectations are true again. I told my friends that Microsoft will copy Google sooner or later, and it’s eventually happening!
Microsoft is working hard to beat Google, they tried to enhance the MSN search engine, but they failed. It’s obvious that MSN search engine sucks and Google still the best. The story ain’t over yet. Google gained respect and trust through its brilliant services, the blogs that we’re using is one of Google’s outstanding products. Google - unlike Microsoft - guarantees you both quality and reliability. Moreover, Google are the pioneers of many web services, like the 2GB Gmail free email, Google Earth, Google Mars, and Google AdSense.

Microsoft is working days and nights to enhance their services and beat Google, as they did with Netscape and many other companies.

Besides Google (not too far from Google), one can’t forget the master piece web browser Mozilla FireFox , It’s spreading quickly, and needless to say, it’s much better than the trash Microsoft Internet Explorer, If you haven’t tried, then you should !!

Now Microsoft shifted to plan “B”, according to the known rule of business “If you can’t beat ‘em, copy ‘em”. !!!

Microsoft has released “new” package of trash, they called it Windows Live, It’s nothing but another copy of Google webservices !! I meant it, it’s nothing but a copy of Google !!! this is disgusting !!

And I bet that Microsoft will include their stupid new services in all of the application included in the new coming version of windows, Windows Vista.

Are they going to beat Google ?? Heh

Microsoft has put back the consumer launch of its new Office software suite to 2007, to coincide with the delayed start date for Windows Vista.

Microsoft said on Wednesday it had to delay the launch of the consumer version of its latest operating system.

It had originally aimed to launch Vista - the first major update since Windows XP was introduced five years ago - in the second half of 2006.

But a version will be available for corporate customers from November 2006.

On Friday, Microsoft confirmed that the mainstream launch of its new Office 2007 system would also be delayed to January.

This will enable Microsoft to market it in tandem with Vista.

Microsoft is planning six versions of the next incarnation of its Windows operating system, three of which will be targeted at home users.

‘Enhanced leadership’

At the same time, Microsoft has reshuffled the management team at the division which oversees its flagship Windows operating system.

Changes include the head of security within Microsoft’s Core Operating System Division moving to a new job.

Mike Nash will be succeeded as head of the Security Technology Unit by Ben Fathi.

efforts to improve security in the new system were largely behind the delay to Vista, Microsoft has admitted.

Brian Valentine and Jim Allchin will be charged with delivering Vista later this year while Steven Sinofsky will become head of a new group responsible for planning future versions of Windows.

“We are enhancing the leadership team and structure across the division to ensure we have the right organization to support our technology vision,” said Kevin Johnson, co-president of the software giant’s Platform and Services Division.

Copied from [ BBC News ]

There’s no doubt that Silicon has changed our life in so many different ways. The 20th century technology was built on the evolution of the Electronic devices which are basically semiconductors composed of Silicon.

Now the technology has reached a point where Millions of transistors are integrated on one small chip which is one of the greatest achievements of the human being.

On the other hand, from the “full utilization” engineering point of view, Silicon now is fully utilized! Although it might make life harder, but still it’s another great acheivement. We should be proud of it!

It seems that the bogy monster of the world of computing is still dominating every part of our life. MS-DOS was the beginning. Then comes the Windows, which changed the world of computing and redefined the concept of personal computers.
The legend ain’t over yet, a new version of Windows is coming!! They call it “Windows Vista”, that’s how they introduce it (copied from Windows Vista homepage):

Introducing Windows Vista

We live in a digital world that is filled with more information, more things to do, and more ways to communicate with others than ever before.
Every day, millions of people around the globe rely on their Windows-based PCs to manage the increasing amounts of digital information in their lives. While the tools we use for managing this information are powerful and familiar, today’s world requires more. You want your PC to adapt to you, so you can cut through all the clutter and focus on what’s important to you.

Windows Vista brings clarity to your world, so you can more safely and easily accomplish everyday tasks and instantly find what you want on your PC. Explore entertainment, such as TV and music, on your Windows Vista-based PC like never before. And with Windows Vista, you’ll more conveniently stay connected to the people who are important to you, from home or while on the go.

Windows Vista puts you in control of what you want to do.

Im not in a position where i can judge the products of Microsoft, or comment on the religious war between Microsoft and the “anyone but Microsoft”; we all stand on the shoulders of giants.
but one might wonder,
Is this new version of Windows really have new features ?? or Is it just a copy of Windows XP ??
Will this new version change the “bad” reputation of Microsoft ??
Who knows!

As an engineer(to be nshallah), you usually have no time to think about fitness, you spend your life reading, working, and enjoy life as a typical geek !! so let’s take a look at our health. Today, after logging off my hotmail account, an interesting article on micro$haft MSN just knocked off my screen, it was saying “Abed, im a good article, please read me , I can be useful, im bug-free !!”.. and fortunately it’s useful. This is the link:
http://www.arabia.msn.com/Family_Home/health_fitness/2/

This is our lucky “bug-free” article..

Many of us constantly complain of fatigue and lack of energy and we blame our bodies and ungratefully accuse them of betraying us in times of need, when in reality we hardly provide our bodies with what they need to perform the daily tasks we demand of them. Maybe it’s time we start eating for energy and give our bodies the right kind of food at the right time.

Contrary to what most people think, evidence has shown that the more frequently you eat, the more energy you’ll have. Five to six meals a day is a better diet for increasing and maintaining energy than a three-meal or a one-meal diet. This is because blood sugar levels decrease after only four hours of eating. Frequent meals increase the rate of metabolism and adjust the levels of insulin. This not only diminishes the need to have high-fat and sugar-loaded snacks, but also allows the body to function at its optimum efficiency.

One of the key secrets to having more energy is eating a healthy breakfast. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It provides you with an energy boost that reduces mood swings and food cravings for the rest of the day. Breakfast-eaters enjoy a higher intake of the essential vitamins and minerals the body needs. Eating breakfast is a guarantee to feeling better both physically and mentally. For breakfast, try to have at least one serving of fruit and stick to high fiber foods, such as high-fiber cereals, oatmeal or whole grain bread. It’s better to avoid sugar and limit caffeine to one cup only.

To eliminate the feeling of sleepiness after lunch, avoid overeating. While having lunch, stay away from high-fat foods, because they lead to fatigue. Try to eat pure protein because that would increase the levels of energy and alertness. Remember to keep lunch light - 500 calories or less.

As for dinner, it should always be kept light. That’s when you should eat less meat, chicken, or other proteins, and eat more fruit and vegetables instead. Right before going to bed, avoid high sugar foods or fat. Eat carbohydrates such as low-fat yoghurt, a fruit salad, or two or three crackers, with a glass of skimmed milk. These types of food should help you relax and sleep peacefully.

As for snacks, try to avoid sugar (cookies, candy, sodas, etc…) and include at least one fruit or vegetable. Snack on high fiber foods instead of carbohydrates and sugar.

Kinds of food you should avoid or take in less amounts include:

Sugar
Cookies
Baked goods
Candy bars
Sodas
Fruit drinks loaded with sugar
Caffeine
Carbohydrates

Shortly, a healthy diet is one that includes a combination of vegetables, whole grains, low fat dairy products, fresh fruit, nuts, fish and lean meats, which should spread out over five to six small meals a day. It should be low in animal fats, sweets and highly refined products or foods with additives.

Have you every heared of the “batch” or “batch process” ?? Wanna get some knowledge about it ?? so here we go…

Batch processing is the sequential execution of a series of programs (”jobs”) on a computer.The term, “batch”, originated in the days when programmers wrote code on paper forms which would be keypunched onto 80-column punch cards or paper tape. The cards or tape would then be passed to the system operator (”sysop”) who would schedule the task, and at a later stage feed the program into the computer. Because a number of tasks would be ‘batched’ together rather than be put into the system immediately the tasks were referred to as “batch jobs”. Batch jobs are set up so they can be run to completion without human interaction, so all input data is preselected through scripts or commandline parameters. This is in contrast to interactive programs which would prompt the user for such input. Batch jobs are not thought of as interactive, but transaction processing systems such as IBM’s CICS may run from a technical perspective as batch jobs, although this is typically obscured from terminal users. Batch processing has these benefits:

• Allows sharing of computer resources among many users
• Time shifts job processing to when the computing resources are less busy
• Avoids idling the computing resources without minute-by-minute human interaction and supervision
• It is used on expensive classes of computers to help amortize the cost by keeping high rates of utilization of those expensive resources.

The batch processing historically been synonomous with mainframe computers. Since this class of computer was so expensive, batch processing was used for the reasons listed above. Also, in the early days of electronic computing, interactive sessions with computer terminal interfaces (and later Graphical user interfaces) were not yet widespread. The term batch has now become synonomous with the UNIX operating system, it has strong utilites within the Operating System that allow various computing tasks to be run in a controlled and orderly manner.

Copied from [ Wikipedia ]

Do you know what’s meant by “Spooling” ?? If you don’t, then the following article might be useful for both of us…

In computer science, spooling is an acronym for simultaneous peripheral operations on-line (although this is thought by some to be a backronym). It refers to putting jobs in a buffer, a special area in memory, or on a disk where a device can access them when it is ready. This is similar to a sewing machine spool, which a person puts thread onto, and a machine pulls at its convenience. Spooling is useful because devices access data at different rates. The buffer provides a waiting station where data can reside while the slower device catches up. Material is only added and deleted at the ends of the area; there is no random access or editing. This also allows the CPU to work on other tasks while waiting for the slower device to do its task.

It can also refer to a storage device that incorporates a physical spool, such as a tape drive.

The most common spooling application is print spooling. In print spooling, documents are loaded into a buffer (usually an area on a disk), and then the printer pulls them off the buffer at its own rate. Because the documents are in a buffer where they can be accessed by the printer, the user is free to perform other operations on the computer while the printing takes place in the background. Spooling also lets users place a number of print jobs in a queue instead of waiting for each one to finish before specifying the next one.

The temporary storage area to which e-mail is delivered by a Mail Transfer Agent and in which it waits to be picked up by a Mail User Agent is sometimes called a mail spool. Likewise, a storage area for Usenet articles may be referred to as a news spool. (On Unix-like systems, these areas are usually located in the /var/spool directory.) Unlike other spools, mail and news spools usually allow random access to individual messages.

Source [ Wikipedia ]

It’s a long story, and tis not yet agreed on. This is an interesting article written by O’Reilly :

C#.NET vs. Visual Basic
The premise of the .NET Framework is that all languages are created equal. To paraphrase George Orwell, however, some languages are more equal than others. C# is an excellent language for .NET development. You will find it is an extremely versatile, robust and welldesigned language. It is also currently the language most often used in articles and tutorials about .NET programming.
It is likely that many VB programmers will choose to learn C#, rather than upgrading their skills to VB.NET. This would not be surprising because the transition from VB6 to VB.NET is, arguably, nearly as difficult as from VB6 to C# — and, whether it’s fair or not, historically,
C-family programmers have had higher earning potential than VB programmers. As a practical matter, VB programmers have never gotten the respect or compensation they deserve, and C# offers a wonderful chance to make a potentially lucrative transition.

C#.NET vs. Java
Java Programmers may look at C# with a mixture of trepidation, glee, and resentment. It has been suggested that C# is somehow a “rip-off” of Java. I won’t comment on the religious war between Microsoft and the “anyone but Microsoft” crowd except to acknowledge that C# certainly learned a great deal from Java. But then Java learned a great deal from C++, which owed its syntax to C, which in turn was built on lessons learned in other languages. We all stand on the shoulders of giants. C# offers an easy transition for Java programmers; the syntax is very similar and the semantics are familiar and comfortable. Java programmers will probably want to focus on the differences between Java and C# in order to use the C# language effectively.

C#.NET vs. C++
While it is possible to program in .NET with C++, it isn’t easy or natural. Frankly, having worked for ten years as a C++ programmer and written a dozen books on the subject, I’d rather have my teeth drilled than work with managed C++. Perhaps it is just that C# is so much friendlier. In any case, once I saw C#, I never looked back.

Hey dudes, this is an article about “How to become as rich as Bill Gates”.. it’s great, read it
http://philip.greenspun.com