The catastrophe actually refers to the Palestinian exodus of 1948; the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes and the destruction of hundreds of Palestinian villages. These events resulted in a massive number of Palestinian refugees who were either driven out of their homes or fled in fear for their lives. My grandparents happened to be of the first category, and their ancestral village near Haifa was destroyed by the Zionist forces (that later became the IDF).

That is why, most Palestinian Nakba memorial posters are just pictures of refugees and their tents. A simple Google image search shows the same.

Yes, it was a catastrophe that on May 15th Palestinians lost their ancestral homelands and their state. However, it is also disastrous that many US media outlets do not mention Palestinian uprooting as the real catastrophe.

Dear Sir or Madam,

You have made a post that dares to criticize Israel. As you know, this makes you an anti-semite.
I would like to point out the following facts that are relevant to the discussion:

[x] 6 million Jews died in the holocaust.
[x] You are an anti semite.
[ ] Israel made the desert bloom and we have beautiful beaches.
[ ] The Jews have been persecuted for thousands of years.
[x] All arabs want to push the Jews into the sea.
[ ] Israel is a shining example of democracy and ethnic discrimination does not exist.
[x] Suicide bombers are killing Israeli citizens and collective punishment will put a stop to this eventually.
[x] The IDF are showing remarkable restraint; They have the power to nuke the entire region but choose not to.
[ ] It is the fault of the Palestinians that they don’t rebuild infrastructure fast enough after we bomb it.
[x] Arafat walked out on camp David, proving that 100% of Palestinians want war, not peace.
[x] The Jews are God’s chosen people and this is the land that was promised to us by a book.
[x] It’s not white phosphorus, we were just dropping road flares!
[x] It is not a genocide until hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are killed and we aren’t even close to that yet.
[ ] 100% of Palestinians are terrorists.
[x] The Arabs drove the Jews from their homeland thousands of years ago so it is about time for some payback.
[x] Israel has killed fewer people than Iran or Iraq which means we are a peaceful state.
[x] Carpet bombing an entire country is a perfectly rational response to the kidnapping of a soldier.
[ ] It’s not a concentration camp, it’s a safety wall!

Therefore, your claim of [Israel dropping white phosphorus on a United Nations school] is false and we should continue to send money and military support to Israel.

Yours sincerely,

AIPAC

P.S. you are an anti-semite

This was provoked by the onslaught of nonsensical responses by Israeli apologists after somebody dared post this picture from Israel’s attack on an UNRWA school in Gaza during operation “Cast Lead”.

If you’re interested, I blogged about my reaction to the attack on this school when it happened here.

On the other hand, this is a useful video to see. Regarding this issue, and it also touches on Israel’s policy to intentionally improvish Gaza and allow the West Bank to build up a bit.

What bothers me is that people like that come on TV speaking authoritatively to the public. This is ridiculous.

Plus, what’s up with arguing that “we pushed for an election but Palestinians were not ready for it yet” ?!!

Of course that kind of language does not play well in America and the expected storm of accusations of anti-semitism, bias, and calls for resignation has been ensued. Helen has apologized for her remarks.

Here is my thought; it is internationally recognized that the lands of the West Bank and Gaza are occupied by Israel (even the US recognizes this). It is also internationally recognized that the future Palestinian state will be established on the West Bank and Gaza (the pre-1967 war borders). So Helen Thomas’s remarks were not that far off base. She can just explain (and I think that is what she actually meant) that Israeli settlers should get out of Palestine (which is something that can be argued and defended in American politics). After all, this is exactly the same line that Jimmy Carter drew in his book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid.

Here is the video if you’re interested:

Let’s be clear, there is not a humanitarian crisis in Gaza … the hospitals are fully stocked, the food markets are fully stocked!

WHAAA???? At first I was so shocked that I thought I must have misheard it. So I watched it again and again; nope that is what he said! Apparently Gaza is in top shape and we didn’t know it! Rep. Pence, I salute you (albeit, it is a one-finger salute).

Pence must have smashed all sorts of spin records. Gaza not in a humanitarian crisis?! Michael Pence, what have you been smoking? In what world do you live? Did you leave planet Earth for Pandora? Actually you know what, if you are so confident that what you say is true, I am willing to personally fund you to travel to Gaza with a camera crew and show us how we got it all wrong. Please Pence, enlighten us.

Here is a video of his CNN interview. Prepare to be dazzled!

Much has been said about Israel’s violent interception of the humanitarian aid flotilla headed to Gaza. Both sides have put forth their claims and counter claims. But the basic facts remain: Israel attacked non-military ships in international waters, Israel used lethal force against unarmed civilians (the activists attacked the Israeli commandos with sticks, rods, and chairs … but what do you expect when you drop commandos on a ship in the middle of night? a dance festival?!), and Israel killed 9 unarmed protesting civilians. After all was said and done, no weapons were found on-board any of the ships.

Nowadays you can’t open any news reader without being bombarded with iPad vs Kindle comparisons. True, it would seem to be that these two devices are targeting an overlapping market segment. But i do not think there is a show down. The real money maker in the e-books market (where the said show down is located) is in book sales and distribution. Ultimately, that is the real money maker for outlet stores like Amazon and Apple Bookstore (/iTunes/iBooks/whatever it’s called).

But if Amazon can release a Kindle application for the iPad, as it already has for the iPhone, then where is the beef? Those who are loyal to Amazon will still drift to Amazon and those who are not will go to Apple’s distribution center. Now, the real show down is perhaps not in the physical device itself but in the deals with publishing houses. Amazon and iBooks have different business models and might be courting different exclusive publishing deals. That is far more important than what device you use to read those e-Books, because it will ultimately determine where is the content available and for how much.

Just my thoughts on this topic that has been clobbering my Google News reader for months now.

Apple fanboys are annoying. This is a mouthful to say for a guy who really hates generalizing. Yes, I hate generalization and I hate blind prejudice, but I’ll talk about that in a later post.

This ranting post was triggered by Mohammad Badi‘s recent post, however it is directed at all Apple fanboys (and girls). I don’t mean to pick on Mohammad, he is a really nice guy and I enjoy his blog (he actually did say that an OS is a matter of personal choice, and I agree with him).

For the record, I have used Windows, Mac, and Linux. Right now, I use Linux. More specifically, I use openSuSE Linux and I have been using it as my main OS for the past 4.5 years. Also, to be more upfront about this, I am a computer science graduate student. That means that I write code and documents by profession. Before anybody accuses me of such, I am not a hacker. Repeat: I am not a hacker. Not by a long shot. I have not written kernel code and I do not plan to do that anytime in the near future (unless my advisor forces me to :-D). However, I am a power user. That is, I like (and prefer) to use the command line shell, I automate many things, I mess with and write configuration files, and I have repeatedly messed with drivers and configs to crash (and sometimes even recover) my machine. I also like nice aesthetics . I like my operating system to look good. Actually, I initially only switched to Linux because it looks good. I use a persona on my firefox, and a theme on my Google chrome.

Again, I am replying to Badi’s post here, but I think this applies in general.

Alright, done with the prelude. Onto the main event:

Mohammad,

Almost every time I open your blog you have a different theme. It has gotten to the point that today I opened your blog to find a theme different than yesterday’s, then when I left a comment the theme changed again! Pick a theme man! Every time I come to your blog I have to check if I am at the right site because it looks different. And these are not small or subtle changes, when you change theme you change big! All the power to you, I like change, it’s the spice of life. But everything within limits, create a distinct look for your blog that let’s people recognize it. However, for the record, I admire your passion for customization.

What does your blog theme have to do with Mac? For a man who really likes to continuously customize his theme, isn’t it a bit odd that you so madly love an operating system that does not even let you customize it beyond what saint Jobs has decreed? Tell me, how many options do you have for changing the windows decoration (title bar and such) in Mac? two? Even crummy old Win95 allowed you to choose any colors you want. What about that menu bar at the top, can you remove it? How many coloring options do you have for that? two? three? Praise Jebus! (and here).

You said that Windows is not that powerful. Excuse me, was there something you wanted to do there that it didn’t allow you to? Have you encountered the elusive “oops, that is beyond my power” error message? I already know what you are going to say next: freezes, crashes, bsod, blah blah blah. Here is the truth. Windows does crash (more specifically, the versions of Windows that i tried do crash). But more than 90% of the time it is not because of Windows but because of faulty (nay, shitty) drivers. Here is the thing, Windows runs on other people’s machines. Each of these machines will use a different set of drivers. Microsoft says, ok, if you want to run Windows on your machine, you should write a driver that tells Windows how to use your proprietary hardware. People write these drivers, but don’t write them well, and that causes the machine to crash. But why can a driver crash the machine? Easy! Because they have to run in kernel mode, so they can do pretty much whatever they want. Apple on the other hand controls everything. They sell you the machine and the software running on it. Thus they have a limited number of hardware vendors and drivers to deal with. As you can see, this allows them to centrally reject shitty drivers. Each approach has its advantages, but I personally prefer openness because I believe in choice & competition.

I don’t deny that Apple makes fine products. No doubt about that. They pay attention to details and the hardware is generally of great quality. But it is important here to distinguish between software and hardware. It is also important to distinguish between the Operating System, the hardware, and the rest of the software application stack that runs on your computer.

You say that Linux’s design is poor. I assume you are talking about the graphical aspects right? If so I challenge you to see one of the well polished distros. Check out KDE on openSuSE or Gnome one LinuxMint. Here is one the main things I love about Linux: It gives me choice. If I wake up today feeling like using KDE, I do that. If I feel like Gnome, that’s fine. If I want to geek-it-out and use Fluxbox or Rat-poison, that’s fine too. Not only that, but I love that it is highly customizable. It tries as much as it can to fit you rather than the other way around. In Linux there are a million ways to do anything. In Mac OS or Windows there is only one way. Their way or the high way. For example, on my machine I have at least 3 file managers. I use which ever I feel like. I can customize my system just the way I like it. I can have as many (or as little) panels floating on my desktop as I want. I can have my kickoff menu be where ever I want it to be. On my desktop I can show the files of any folder that I want, or any combination of folders (not just the files from the “Desktop” folder). On my Linux machine I can customize any shortcut for anything I want and I do mean anything. I bet when you switched to Mac you had to learn their shortcuts for doing things, right? For example, AFAIK, you have to use a different shortcut to switch between windows of different applications than that for the same application. What if I want a shortcut to maximize a window vertically only? or horizontally only? or move a window to a certain area with just key press? Can i do that? While we’re at it, If i want to truly customize my Mac and get rid of the menu bar on top, can i do that?  No!

Notice that all my examples above were only about superficial user interface issues. At the core, I think all three OSes are superb. However, here is the point Mohammad, I think machines have to adapt to us, and not us adapting to machines. I feel Linux has that mentality. The default settings in Linux are merely a suggestion, but everybody customizes it the way they want. That is why people race to post screenshots of their Linux desktops, and that is why you have so many linux distributions.

In this rant I have defended Microsoft, praised Apple, and explained why I love and use Linux. Personally, I think all 3 of these operating systems are fine, and each has its own strengths and weaknesses. After all, (and this is something that I totally agree with you on), this is a matter of personal choice. You think Mac is superior, I respectfully disagree and think that Linux is a better option.

Update: Just to drive home the point that Linux has nice GUI, check out this video introducing KDE 4.3 (a Linux desktop environment):

If I tell you that search is crucial for using the web and indeed the web’s growth and future, you’ll probably shrug and ask what’s new. Indeed, web search is almost becoming like our sixth sense and we rarely give it much thought. Looking for something? just search for it, or, Google it.

Fun fact: Google doesn’t want people to use their company name as a verb meaning search because they’re afraid that that verb will become detached from the company itself and that people will think of googling as the act of search irrespective of how that is done. That is, they are afraid that you’ll start googling on Yahoo or Bing :-). Case in point, they don’t want “google” to become like “xerox” or “kleenex”. More on genericized trademarks.

Last year, Microsoft introduced their new search engine, Bing, which is the first possible serious contender to Google… ever! This actually turned out to be good for us consumers; both search engines have started rolling out new features quickly. Competition is good. I think I can safely say that the state of web search is much better now in the beginning of 2010 than what it was in the beginning of 2009.

The marketing campaigns of both engines are perhaps a prime indicator of the heated competition. Google rarely advertise their products. Not only that, but Google Search was actually never advertised (afaik)! Imagine that, the most used web service on Earth was never advertised! Bing as the newcomer has been running commercials on the web and TV. Recently, Google started advertising their web search. I think this is quite shocking. I think everyone who has ever used the Internet knows about Google search, yet they are starting to advertise now. I first saw their ads on Hulu, and now I am encountering them in other places.

If you’re interested, here’s Google’s search campaign and here’s Bing’s search campaign.

A year ago to this date, a brutal Israeli offensive on Gaza took place. This tiny strip of land had been besieged for many months already and its people were already denied the very basic amenities of life. Yet, a year ago Israel launched a brutal and bloody attack on Gaza that killed at least 1400 people. This savage attack did not distinguish between civilians and militants, and people generally agree that the Israeli response to the termination of the cease fire was at least disproportionate.

The Israeli-given reason for this attack was to fend off the Hamas make-shift rockets that were fired onto southern Israel, which have escalated after the end of the cease-fire. However, this is hardly the case. The Hamas rockets are very primitive and make-shift. They are literally composed of gun powder in pipes that fly. Thus there was no infrastructure for Israel to take out. Plus, the Israeli attack did not stop the Hamas mortars even after it finished.

Unfortunately, it seemed that this attack was little more than a political move to help a candidate win an election. At the start of the offensive, the ruling Israeli party (Kadima) headed by Tzipi Livni were losing in the primary polls against pro-war hardliners and right-wingerssuch as Benjamin Netanyahu. This full-scale attack (without the interference of George Bush in has days in office) boosted Livni’s poll numbers and made the elections closer. Unfortunately, besides the large Palestinian death toll, this was the only outcome of this campaign on the Israeli side.

The Israeli attack didn’t distinguish between militants and civilians, and very little was done to minimize civilian casualties. Israel continued to justify that their mass bombing was because Hamas militants were hiding behind women and children. However, it seemed like Israel was using that as a ready excuse to justify anything (and little proof of that was provided in many cases). For example, Israel bombed a U.N. school that was temporarily housing refugee families which resulted in killing at least 40 people all of which were civilians. Israel also ignored international conventions and weapons that were banned internationally to be used against civilians. For example, white phosphorus was used in civilian locations which is banned internationally. To make matters worse, Israel prevented international news reporters from entering Gaza so as to limit the amount of information getting out.

As I mentioned before, much has been said about this offensive. A U.N. fact-finding investigation of this conflict (what is sometimes called the “Goldstone Report”) concluded that both Hamas and Israel were to blame for the conflict, and concluded that Israel committed war crimes and and possible crimes against humanities.

I personally do not agree or support Hamas, and I have stated that on multiple occasions. However, regardless of your political views you have to acknowledge that what Israel did in killing more than 1400 people, at least 1000 of whom were unarmed civilians, and at least 300 were children was extremely wrong and inhumane. Today, Israel is still denying basic amenities and even cement from entering Gaza to rebuild the destroyed homes.

On this day, it is worth giving a moment to think and reflect.

In the middle east religion dominates and dictates many aspects of our lives. This does not imply that people adhere to it strictly, but it is usually the scale by which almost everything is measured. Religion is so tightly integrated into middle eastern society that if you were to meet a random person in the middle east, it is most likely that you’ll find him/her to be a moderate pious person who believes in god.

Before I came to America to continue my education, I used to think that religion was not prominent in everyday American life. When I came here I realized that it was actually the opposite. The USA is probably the most religious of all industrial nations. American elections are a great proof of that.

So why am I surprised now? Well, I study in a very technical graduate program in a very liberal campus in a very liberal state. I knew there are a few religious communities on-campus (there are a few of us Muslims, and some number of other denominations), but I used to think that most people in my department were not particularly religious. Now in this Jewish and Christian holidays season I found out that a good chunk of my friends and some professors attend the various masses and prayer ceremonies. I think everybody seeks to find spiritual and inner peace regardless of what they do or where they come from.

Anyway, in that spirit, happy holidays to everybody. Hopefully the beginning of this year will be better than the beginning of last year.

So here is the thing, I argue that if you build a big enough model, a big enough computer, and a good enough simulator, you can probably simulate the universe in its entirety. I think this is possible because I currently think that there is no fundamental random process in the universe (i.e. if you can account for everything, you can predict anything). Actually, there is still argument amongst physicists of whether properties in quantum mechanics appear random because of unknown hidden variables (i.e. randomness does not exist) or because there exists something that is fundamentally random in the universe. .. but let’s skip this for now.

Anyway, let’s get to the cool part.

Imagine that we can build a *huge* simulator that can account for everything and predict (read: compute) anything.  This simulator would be able to replay everything from the moment of the big bang, to the formation of Earth, to the rise of human beings, to the conversations you have with your friends, to me typing this post now. Surely this is an amazing simulator.

Now imagine that you have access to this simulator. Not only that, but being the curious person you are, you use it to fast-forward and play events in the future. So the simulator will tell you what events will happen in the future. So you look at the simulator and it will tell you what I will eat tomorrow, what will life look like in the future, where will your children, .. everything. It will tell you everything. Again, this is an awesome possum simulator.

Now the mind-bending part.

If you look at that simulator to see you future, will your future moves happen because you want to do them or because the simulator told you to do them? For example, if the simulator told me to eat pizza tomorrow, will I eat pizza tomorrow because I want to, or because the simulator told me to? Remember, I can’t trick that program because it would have already accounted for me trying to trick it. So the minute you look at your future you don’t know whether you would have acted that way because you wanted to or because the program told you to.

For example, assume you have been a good person all your life, but the simulator told you that you will become a thief. Would that happen because you would have “naturally” became a thief, or because the simulator told you so?

Luckily (and unfortunately) it currently doesn’t look like we can ever build such a simulator because it has to also account for itself as part of the universe, so it has to be as big as itself plus the universe in which it resides (you see the problem).

For the computer scientists in the crowd, would such a simulator be able to solve the halting problem?

This summer was nothing short of amazing! I got the opportunity of a lifetime to go do summer research at a lab in Cambridge University in England, and it was spectacular.

King’s College Chapel as seen from “The Backs”

It was really amazing being in Cambridge. At the time of my visit the university was already 800 years old! Affiliates of that university have contributed to literally every field of science, and they include among others: Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, James Maxwell, and Alan Turing. Isaac freaking Newton was there! How cool is that! I never expected to be able to go to pub and have dinner at the same table where the discovery of DNA was first publicly announced. This was unreal.

Besides the university, the town of Cambridge is amazing. It is old, has lots of history, and very bike-friendly. People use bikes to get everywhere, and there are bike parking spaces all over town. As a matter of fact, policemen hassle you if you break traffic rules with your bike! I was really shocked by that, and I can’t say that I really obeyed the rules I just learned to avoid the police if I am going backwards on a one-way street

Houses in Cambridge are more “European” than I’m used to

The town and university had much more religious affiliations than I would have thought. There were churches all over the place, and several places in town were named after iconic Christians, e.g. “Magdalene Bridge” and “Jesus Green”. Other than that, the weather in Cambridge was horrible unfortunately. It was cold for most of the time and almost constantly raining, and I was there in the summer! At the end I was glad to go home just to get some sunlight.

I am usually not an outgoing person. However, given that this was my first time in Europe, I decided to take the opportunity and tour around. If you are young and single you can get around Europe very cheaply. They have a huge number of deals for students in almost every country. For example, you can literally find good accommodation for just €18 a night! So I went on a few weekend trips.

Granted, you can never experience a city in just 48 hours. However, you can still have a great time and get a taste of the local culture. The process itself was really amazing. I would wake up Saturdays at around 4am and bike to the bus station, then go from there to the airport to catch the 6am flight to any European capital. I would then spend the weekend there, and travel back on Monday morning. The awesome thing is that Monday noon I would be back in my lab working. Never in a million years would I thought I’d ever get to do that. I’ll tell you more about my weekend trips later, for now let me share some photos from London.

A view of Westminster Palace from the London Eye

London was nice. We happened to go there on the Queen’s coronation anniversary, so there were very nice shows and marches around town. We went to Westminster Abbey where various kings, queens, and other famous people are buried. I got to see Newton’s and Darwin’s burial grounds which is very surreal.

Westminster Abbey

A view of Big Ben from street level

All-in-all, England was very nice. Unfortunately I didn’t see much besides Cambridge and London (I opted to go out to other places instead). It took me some time to get used to their accent and coins (they have so many coins) but at the end I was a professional :-P. Probably the only two things I didn’t like were the weather (it rained constantly, and it was cold even though it was “summer”), and the local food. Everybody told me that English food sucks but I didn’t believe that until I went there. The food was bland and tasteless at best. Luckily, you can get plenty of non-English food all over the place. So over all, England was nice place to visit.

Today an attacker in Tel-Aviv opened fire at a club for gay teen Isralis killing at least two people and wounding many. In the AP video report, the police chief says that he doesn’t know if the attack was carried out by a gunman or a terrorist but the evidence leans more towards it being a gunman. What is the difference you say  ? If the event is the same and the victims are the same and the attacker is the same, how can the event be a terrorist attack or a just an act of a gunman.  You would think that it all has to do with a motive. An gunman has his lone sick mentality that caused him to commit his act, while a terrorist does his act insited by other people and in order to strike fear in the general population.

True. But, not always. In Israel any Arab attacker is a terrorist, and any Jewish attacker is a gunman. Regardless of the motive. Yes, I have proof. Remember a few months back, a 19 year-old Palestinian from Jerusalem proposed to his lover and she rejected him, while he was driving back his car got off the road and veered towards some pedistrians, one of the pedistrians immediately shot the driver dead without attempting to do anything else. The Israeli police said that the boy was carrying a terrorist attack, while his family says that he probably just lost control of the car since that boy had no political interest or affiliation. What was interesting in that piece is that the boy was immediately judged to be a terrorist by the Israelis (and thus his family’s home had to be demolished) without any minute of investigation into his background. Simply the fact that he was Arab!

So yes. The words by which you convey an event are often just as important as the event itself.

Pfft!

It is always nice to learn about the fascinating stories of the past. History can be very entertaining if relayed correctly. Unfortunately, many history textbooks are filled with boring dates and badly narrated stories. In his short book, E.H. Gombrich tries to remedy that. He narrates the history of the world more like a story. With minimal use of dates or boring details as you’d often fine in textbooks. In fact, his book was originally intended for children. But I find it suitable for all ages.

My only criticism of this book is that its definition of “the world” is really “Western Europe”, and not all of it. Mostly Germany, Austria and France. The history of the rest of the world is briefly, if at all, mentioned. Not only is it focused on western Europe, but it is written from a Christian point of view, even though the author is Jewish! For example, the Muslim conquests were described as brutal and ruthless, while the countless deaths caused by the Christian wars and conquests were described as sad and unfortunate!

But, don’t let that deter you. This is indeed an interesting book, and its material is presented in a very eloquent manner. You will briefly learn about pre-historic people, then the Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, Jews, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, and briefly about the Arabs, Indians, and Chinese, all the way through the middle ages and beyond. It is an interesting read that tries to highlight each eras contribution.

My advice is, read this book, but don’t take it as absolute fact. Just an interesting read.

Apparently this organization takes tourists on some sort of live military tour where they penetrate illegally occupied territories and sit in on courts of Palestinian captives.

Screenshot of the “tour highlight” !!

What year is this? Are we back in Roman times where Christians where being fed to lions in front of the cheering crowds? Are the destroyed lives and the misfortunes of the occupied people of Palestine a tourist attraction to this organization? Seriously, this is so barbaric!

What I hated though is how some techies and all techy-wannabes had a spontaneous collective orgasm at the first sight of the news. I mean come on! I think some of the guys at TechCrunch had to go change their pants after they read the announcement. Heck, this guy at the “IT Portal” has already written 5 Reasons To Love Google Chrome OS and the product doesn’t even have a web page yet! I like how he explained “reason #3”:

Google has a blank canvas to work with and doesn’t need to rely on code that is 15 years old, nor does it have to deal with software compatibility issue

Oh really ? Somebody should tell that guy that Linux (what Chrome really is) was first written in 1991 and is thus 18 years old!

Finally, some common sense articles are popping up. I like this one (specially how he catches TechCrunch for calling an OS like Linux a mere “bag of drivers” .. anyone who knows anything about operating systems knows that is not true). This article is also nice.

There are reasonable predictions of what we can expect from Google Chrome OS, and I’ll try to talk more about this later.

P.S: I hate over-hyping. I REALLY REALLY HATE over-hyping. That is why I dislike Apple, they overhype everything, even basic features! In all fairness, Google didn’t overhype Chrome, but many of those “techies” did.

I’ve been diligent to eat my fair share (and a bit more) of falafel, shawirma, kifta, and your other normal Arabic restaurant food. Perhaps I am preparing for the upcoming drought I’ll experience when the internship ends and I’m back at my small isolated campus.

Today after going to the gym (yes I am surprised too) I went for my daily dose of falafel at a nice Turkish restaurant. On my way back I noticed a cafe called “rotana” with the smell of m3assel spilling out of the door seams. I immediately thought “trix & tarneeb”, something I haven’t had properly for almost two years now.

I walked inside and the owner recognized I was new. He insisted to treat me to a cup of tea even though it was late and mentioned I had to leave. Typical Arab :-). We were 3 Arab men; sitting in an Arabic coffee-shop with argeeleh, tea, cocktails, and cards served, a tv stood in the corner and nobody was lokng at it. The talk undoubtedly turned into politics even though we just met. Ahh how I missed hanging out with the guys in the 2ahawee. I haven’t had the chance to play tarneeb yet, there was no fourth! But I am happy, maybe because it reminds me of back home.

Interestingly enough however, Israel-Palestine has been mostly blank with only English written there. That made me curious because Google, like many other tech companies, tries to remain neutral when it comes to international political issues, and i wanted to see how they handle this one. So i kept on checking back often.

Today I noticed that they started to display Hebrew names in pre-1967 areas (which is politically safe). Interestingly however, the Hebrew words only appear when you are not zoomed in to see the individual city names.

Anyway, what is really funny is that they have hugely misspelled the Arabic name of Madaba. Here is a screenshot below:

Btw, I couldn’t find a link to report this mistranslation, otherwise i would have reported it.

The video picture quality is not good, but that is not important.

Figaro … Figaro … Figaro …

In these days (and specially if the whole “cloud-as-a-service” model is to become successful, oh and it will) we should have a concept of a single global account, or a managable federation of accounts that form a global account, that would allow people to “turn on” services on the web to try them out (or use them), and then “turn them off”.

I know about openID, but having a single account (be it from Google or Microsoft or Yahoo) to log in to many places is too “big-brothery” for my taste. Plus, not all online services allow users to use openID, even though they really should.

It is bollocks! Bollocks I tells ya! *shaking his fist*

But now i’ve decided. Enough is enough. I must disengage. Let the demons clear out of my head. Let me sleep the night again.

Computers are no longer those bulky devices under or on your desk. They are no longer those thin and slick laptops on your desk or lap. These have become merely interfaces to computers and computation power.

Your new computer is somewhere off in the “cloud”; you don’t own it, you can’t touch it, and you don’t even know exactly where it is. Your computer today is really a collection of hundreds of thousands of what you used to think of as computers before, all of which working in unison to provide you all the services you need.

Your new computer is on the Internet. Actually, your computer today is the Internet. The Internet is no longer an auxiliary service to complement the rest of your computation needs. The Internet today is no longer just a service, it is everything. Although our desktops and laptops are capable of doing wonderful things on their own, but if they are disconnected from the web we tend to think of them as useless.

The Internet today can stream you an infinite collection of videos, movies, TV episodes, and live events. The Internet can let you call, email, IM, and handle all your communication needs. The Internet can take care of your office needs of word processing, spreadsheets, presentation, team collaboration, and database. The Internet can store, organize, or even help you edit your photos. The Internet provides you with games you can instantly enjoy.

While this is not new, what is new of the past two or three years, however, is that you can get all these services with minimal configuration on your end, and with all these services running in your browser, and we’ve only just got started. This is the new Internet. This is your new computer!

With this, all the old debates of Windows vs Mac OS vs Linux are kind of irrelevant these days. All of them connect you to the same Internet, and that is where all the new applications run. What is relevant however, is the emergency of the new Internet Operating Systems. Unfortunately there isn’t much debate about this. However, if you think about it, companies like Facebook, Google, and Microsoft Live, are all competing to build your next operating system, or the environment where you work.

The closest of these to a full-blown “operating system” is probably Facebook. This of course is no wonder because they bought the Internet start up Parakey that was interested in building a hosted, virtual, Internet operating system. If you look at Facebook, they even adopt the mantra of existing operating systems. They have a little bar at the bottom where your notifications appear on the right (just like where your system tray icons would appear in Windows). You can install different applications to your profile, you start your applications by clicking on a menu from the left side of your bar. Developers have an API and programming languages to write programs to run on the Facebook environment. So it is in effect a full-blown “operating system”. I only put the quotes here because it technically doesn’t manage your hardware like a “real” operating system does, but it is pretty much everything else for you.

This is very exciting. Your new computer data and services are available to you 24/7 around the globe. It is very exciting because you no longer have to manage and maintain your computer as you inadvertently had to in the past. Previously, you would buy a computer to use it, and you’d end up administering it just to keep it running, which took away from the time you can actually use your computer to derive some benefit out of it. To realize this, think of how much time you had to spend to install applications and fix problems that you encounter (computer doesn’t work, this or that program don’t work ..etc). Now, all that is gone and taken care of by somebody else. You can now derive benefit from your computer without any extra effort.

This is also exciting because it creates new problems for us to think about. For example, we are now no longer owners of our data and computation. It is probably companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Zoho that own your data. So how do you ensure that your data is still safe and confidential ? Your new computer services run on hundreds of thousands of machines in a distributed fashion, how do you make that possible ? Your new hosted services are expected to be up and running (available), and extremely responsive, 24/7 and around the globe, how do you make that possible ? How do you integrate the experiences of millions of people so that we can facilitate collaboration while still protecting security ? and how do use users’ experiences to create better services ?

This is the new Internet. This is the new world of “cloud computing“. This is your new computer. Welcome to your new computer.