BlogAllAlong

It’s funny how some people tend to rush, believe and spread news about what they want to be true. I just heard today and verified the story now. The fake story of Tom Cruise converting to Islam is posted on UnNews since last 1st April. And as it says at the top of the page, “This article is part of UnNews, your source for up-to-the-microsecond misinformation.”. When searching in English, I found some posts related to it, questions with negative answers. Do a relevant search in Arabic, I found hundreds of results at the top, all talking about the truth of Tom Cruise turning to Islam, with people blessing and praying for God. I tried quickly to search for posts denying the story, but couldn’t find any.

So I think it’s fact now, Tom Cruise is a muslim, whether he likes it or not :).

Popularity: 42% [?]

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

 Loading ...

If there is one ministry in Kuwait that is working hard, that would be the ministry of communication (MOC). And man I hope they never did. In a strong massive campaign it seems, several popular sites have been blocked by Kuwait ISPs after orders from the MOC. DailyMotion.com, CollegeHumor.com have been found blocked in the past few days. Why they block it you ask? According to them, those sites offer offensive content against our beliefs and religion. I only visited CollegeHumor once and the main page didn’t have offensive content, DailyMotion is a video streaming service just like YouTube. Soccer fans love it for what it has to deliver in that area, ofcourse the site has sexual content as any other video site, but the general theme of the site, visiting main page, you don’t normally find offensive content.

On a different scale, Ali from Deera Chat podcast has been reporting that 3 action movie clean DVDs are held by customs for clearance. I have seen the tracking record, it’s been standing there for over 20 days! 20 days to clear 3 DVDs? What age are we living in? I bet that’s a trick from government to help local business owners make more money, as the difference in price between Kuwait and outside is becoming more obvious to many people. I get my stuff from outside for literally half the price or more. Few hundreds is saved on one order. Business dealers here don’t want to lower their prices, and yet they still want everyone to buy from them.

What if the government is really interested in protecting people from offensive harmful content that will affect our beliefs and manners, and that we are only looking at it from our short angle? Well in that case I suggest the government simply takes a look at our subscription channels like Showtime. Over there I’ve seen things I never saw anywhere else. Things disgusting. Things unbearable. You see sex scenes, offensive scenes, Passions of the Christ movie which was banned from Kuwait Cinema, Da Vinci Code as well. Movies that mock the Holy prophets and accusing Saint Meriam (Mary) of adulteress, God forgive me for just passing it. I never heard anything against those channels. No censoring, no banning, no auditing. Why? Because it’s difficult or even impossible for those channel owners to censor the movies as they come from outside, and banning them would cost those business owners a lot of money.

So in summary, after much study (or actually just little short one), I was able to formalize the two conditions the government follows in their ban and censoring of content and services:

1. Does it cost us money? Block it!
2. Is it against our tradition, beliefs, interests, moods, and blocking will not cost us money? Block it!

Why my blog is still not blocked then you ask? They just don’t care enough… yet!

Popularity: 40% [?]

(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

 Loading ...

I got this weird Amazon suggestion below:

I tried reading it several times and what they are saying is, customers who bought Programming Collective Intelligence also purchased Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide: Making Web 2.0 Work, which is due to be released in 2008! This is either some cheap marketing or they are considering pre-orders as purchases :). Either ways, the book seems worthy of adding to Wish List and keeping an eye on rating. I’m not gonna rush and pre-order it though. It won’t reach here in time anyways!

Popularity: 35% [?]

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

Some of the most fascinating stories in your life happen at your work place. The more critical the job, the more weird and fascinating it gets. Some memories and stories are just too good to leave forgotten in history, so I decided to share some of them on my blog.

It was back in 2003, while I was working in a bank switching company, that we received a call from a leading local bank telling us they are receiving from our public ATM machine VISA card they did not issue. Normally our ATM machine would send the VISA to the bank that issued them, but this one had the Bank prefix but was not their card. It was the start of fraud criminal chase that went on for days. What that basically means is that someone is using the switching company’s public ATM to try and fake some cards. He must be issuing fake cards, and using the public ATMs of ours as they don’t have security cameras. Soon after, the bank called and said they are receiving enormous amount of invalid cards now and this thing must be stopped. The criminal must be brought to justice. The user was doing it at random intervals, but from the same machine, sometimes at middle of the night as well.

Our efforts to install cameras on the ATM were going to take time for legal and contractual matters. The solution was to swallow the card when next incident happen. At least that way we can take a look at the card. Is it white blank card, or official issued card. We can hopefully also get the finger prints of the criminal of it, and catching him would be a piece of cake then. Couple of days took the developer to implement and apply the fix. I was at the edge of my seat. “Did they catch him?” I kept asking. Until one call came, and the manager was jumping literally “We got him!. Send the card over” she screamed.

A sealed envelop came then. The manager with excitement not exceeding mine quickly opens it, and down felt credit card with a picture on it. You should’ve seen the look at her face when she saw it. Without saying a word she picked up the phone and called the lady at the bank.

Manager: We got the card! Are you standing? If so be seated and be strong.

Bank Lady: What?

Manager: It’s your sister’s card and her photo on it as well!

Bank Lady: …

Bank lady called her sister to verify. She naively said YES I was at the center last night and the ATM swallowed my card. Apparently she didn’t tell her “every word you say will be taken against you”. This is Kuwait!. I really couldn’t hold the laugh inside at that time. She was chasing unaware her own sister. More and more investigations went on from both ends. It turns out the number on the card was not the same as the number sent to our system. There were few differences. More and more cases were checked, and there were no 7s on any card sent from that ATM.

Turns out the ATM card reader was a bit dusty and was reading all 7s as 0s! Thus, VISA cards were sent to the bank. The bank freaked it was a fraud. Issue investigation request, a card was randomly captured, and that card belonged to the sister of the bank lady who was requesting the chase. Just think, how ironic, and how improbable. Think on the other hand if it was a scary looking guy, or poor one whose card was swallowed. He naturally who’ve been arrested and interrogated before the mistake is found out! We blastered in laughs really that day. Nice to have such incidents to break the boring routine isn’t it?

Popularity: 43% [?]

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

Have you ever heard of Microsoft? It’s a software company that started in the seventies by two young geeks who dropped out of university. They thought that they can create a home PC that would be used by everyone around the world. Eventually they became multi-billionaires and their brand is currently ranked # 3 worldwide (behind Google and General Electrics :P), and is valued globally at $55bn. Apparently the brand name Microsoft was not copyrighted every where when they started. They either didn’t think the name would grow that large, or most likely they were just too small to copyright it in each and every country at that time. Either ways, a company inside Portugal back in 1981 called it self Microsoft locally, and thus forcing Microsoft to use a different name in that market, which they chose MSFT.

According to Microsoft Lda CEO Ricardo Carvalho, MSFT have been interestedin buying the brand name from them but needed some time to think it up. Well, apparently MSFT’s time is up as Microsoft Lda have released a public bid on the brand name on eBay for a starting $1m price. This is going to cost MSFT a lot more than if they have reached an agreement with the company directly. Imagine how many people would want to get their hands on that name. Think if Google buys it with their load of billions of dollars and makes it a second name for Google in Portugal. That would be really humiliating, but ofcourse it won’t happen. Microsoft won’t allow it I’d say, and the smart trick from Microsoft Lda is gonna push the price high until no one can top Microsoft bid. The auction will kick off on Wednesday, so if you plan on making a bid, starting counting your cash money now.

Popularity: 35% [?]

(2 votes, average: 3 out of 5)

 Loading ...

So I finally got my MacBook Pro after much delay and hesitation. The reason I picked it was to find an alternative to Windows, and mostly because I wanted a firm reliable hardware. Most new laptops are noisy, heat up, and crash easily. Having seen how MacBook is fast and quite, and after the recent price drop, it made sense to go for and try what everyone else seems to be talking about. Luckily, I got it from Amazon and without having to go through the hassle of Customs. The MacBook came equipped with a CD for Mac OS 10.5, which I heard quite a lot good reviews about.

Soon after installing the OS 10.5 Apple is so happy about, I realized how much marketing and fanboyism plays a big part in Apple sales. Don’t get me wrong from what I will list down below, I am not saying it’s a piece of crap and I regret buying it, I hope I don’t. But from all the media, humor ads Apple made of the PC, and all the fuss they make about their products and brand, I expect a lot more from the first time experience. So here is what I find:

• Max OS 10.5 Requires Fresh Installation: Despite their mocking ads about PC upgrade disasters, Apple managed to released a new OS that by all reviewers would work best if you do fresh installation, which I did.
• Keyboard Lock!: Doing fresh installation on quite new MacBook Pro, the keyboard started randomly locking for 15-20 seconds. You cannot do anything through the keyboard for that amount of time. I had to download like 100 MB of updates to fix it. Touche on you. How comparable to Windows, which at least runs on different hardware. MacBook is a bundled hardware/software sold by Apple. They should know better than to face such ridiculous issues.
• Can’t unhide applications: Some applications like iWork just hide when I switch to another application, and I simply can’t unhide it. I have to Force Quite and restart the application again. There goes the joke of Ctrl+Alt+Del hah!
• Apple Button: For some reason, Apple takes it personally against the Ctrl button. I don’t mind to learn new ways that would make more sense on the long run. But simply introducing a new Apple button, squeezing it between Space and Alt button, and making it do all Ctrl is supposed to do just does not make any sense. Ctrl button is almost freezed on the side, and the Apple button is placed different than Ctrl button usually is, thus adding complexity to adaptation to new layout, and giving zero benefit to the end user. Just follow the trend and don’t get so fancy about your buttons if you have nothing to add.
• Enter Button: dumpiest move by Apple I always say. When you are moving over a file and click Enter, Apple assumes it’s more obvious that you want to rename the file rather than edit it. The least of actions a person does is rename a file. Why would you wanna do that so often? It is just much more obvious to open a file with Enter click. But with Apple no. It’s more high class to Apple+Down click a file to open it!
• Heating up: For heavy installations, the MacBook really heats up on your lap.

Still, MacBook gives superior performance and is very quite. It has some nice features that needs getting used to. I don’t say Windows is more reliable, but all the fuss and mocking of Windows simply didn’t make sense facing all these problems on the first 2 days, especially that Apple ships the hardware and software together, unlike Windows that is installed on different hardwares and shipped by different companies. If I was Steve Jobs I would take down all PC Vs Mac ads right now. Not that they are not fun to watch, but it all fires back at Apple at the end.

Popularity: 34% [?]

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

 Loading ...

So Amazon have revealed their hope for revolution of eBook reading, portable reader called Kindle. Ever since the announcement and people have been submitting bad and worse reviews. Most from people who did not even buy it, but just can’t bare the concept of paying $400 for a book reader that if someday breaks, you would lose all your collected books. Currently Kindle has 3/5 Star rating on Amazon after it was 2.5 only. But what about the sales? Amazon are promoting this thing like crazy and so far I haven’t heard a lot about the sales. So let’s check Amazon Sales rank for this item.

Ohhh… It’s # 1 seller…

On Kindle Store! What a nice way to hide sales figures ;). Not sure if it’s intentional or not, but this sales rank is just useless this way.

Popularity: 38% [?]

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...