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 Upon request from macaholiQ8, I am reviewing this LCD 46″ V-Series screen from Sony. I should note that I’m not the expert in this field, but it’s mostly an end user opinion of it. Below are the specs, and my opinion along with it.
Product Name:  Sony LCD Bravia KLV-46V200A

SIZE: 46″

Supported Resolutions: 480p, 720p, 1080i - This is the drawback for HD Gamers who mostly would want to go with 1080p. Even though for me, when I tried the 1080i, I did not see huge improvement over 720p in the picture quality, and neither I noticed any problems with motion in video games. For more information about the two types, read the post 1080i & 1080p.

Input & Output Slots: The device comes with the widest range of possible options you may think of for connecting external equipments.

• Side Slots: S VHS/Hi8/DVC camcoder & Headphones. So you can easily connet your camera to play videos, or your normal definition gaming device, e.g. Wii or PS2.
• Back Slots: Loads of slots are there. Most important are PC IN, Digital Satellite Receiver, Digital Terrestrial Receiver, HDMI-IN (1 only),  video game equipment, VCR, DVD Recorder, Hi-Fi audio equipment. Mostly, you won’t miss a thing. But the problem is, this LCD screen best fits on walls rather than TV stand, and once you do so, you will have to take the screen down every time you want to put or remove a new cable. And for that, it really takes two strong men to do. Your house mate won’t help much, I had to call my brother over to the house to get it down. The other option is, if you are so skinny, and lubricate your hand with oil, you might be able to slid your hand in the back and just get the cable in. I somehow managed to do that when I couldn’t wait any longer to play PS3 using the HDMI cable :). Point being is, I guess they could’ve made the wall hanger a bit adjustable to move back and forth when wanting to connect new equipments.

Viewing Angle: 178 Degrees. I’ve heard that others in numbers outdo this one, or that Plasma has a better viewing angle. Regardless of why you may want to watch the TV from such an angle, I have my TV in the living room, lay down in my bedroom and am able to watch it crystal clear though the door. I can’t wish for more than that.

Ghosting effect: Nothing yet.

Fast motion response: This one is usually a take against LCDs, but I’ve seen movies like Blood Diamond and Flags of our Father, watch soccer games, and played hard-core PS3 games with not a single problem yet thank God. Is this where the brand comes in handy? Maybe.

Additional Equipments: Alongside the LCD screen, I got the Sony DVD Home Theater System. It’s not cheap at all, but the great thing about it is, it includes 5 DVD-Exchanger with embedded sound amplifier. Also, the rear speakers are connected to the front ones via infrared. So no wiring all across the room is needed. If you notice the small deive on top left of the image, that’s the transmitter for infrared signal.

Why did I choose it?

Going through lots of reviews and comparisons between LCD and Plasma, while numbers in general favored Plasma, I still  inclined towards the LCD. First, it does not have the Burn-In effect, and it’s much more suitable for gamers. Even though I didn’t have any plans for games at the time, I knew I won’t be able to resist for long. Second is LOVE. That’s right. You move inside the showroom, browsing tens of different screens, not even knowing the size, type, or brand of it. And you find your self suddenly standing infont of one only, staring at it. Saying, this is the one I want. I kept doing this for maybe 8 months. Everytime I enter Sony shop I stand infront of the same one. I went then to public showrooms showing different brands. I somehow found my self staring at the very same screen. It got on the nerve of all people around me. I kept saying I want it, and didn’t get it. They just shouted back, just get it “Theba7tna!”. Eventually I did.

Isn’t it so romantic? Let’s make a hollywood movie. Better than the Titanic. Point I want to make is, browse through all kinds, and see the one that you really like. The one that really catches your eyes (and fits your budget!).

Hope this little was a bit of help for some, at least MacaholiQ8. If you have specific question, please fire away.

Useful Links:

Sony Bravia KLV-46V200A Cnet Review: 9/10 on Cnet. Not bad.

LCD and Plasma Pros & Cons: Pros & Cons of both LCD and Plasma.

LCD Vs CRT:  Even though I don’t see the need to compare it to CRT, the LCD points them selves are useful.

How LCDs Work

How Plasma Displays Work

Popularity: 48% [?]

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PC Magazine have compiled a great list of selected 157 free softwares/online services you can use over commercial ones. While 157 is a large number, I strongly suggest you go through the whole categorized list, or your favorite category at least. I tried to go through it to come up with most preferred ones, I ended up with a list of almost, umm… 157! No just kidding, but the list was really huge I will try to make some picks of what I use, and am interested in. Also, I will list the one hot item I think they missed from the list.

What I Currently Use:

• GIMP: The FREE open source graphics editor is not really as good as Photoshop, but does the job on many occasions. At least for a novice like me, it’s more than enough.
• Notepad+++: I added an extra plus here as this light-weight notepad clone editor is really good for quick file editing. Tab based, open source, add-ons, highlighting on various programming languages. Only place where it lacks is for framework based development, like Ruby on Rails. This is where Komodo Edit comes into picture. Komodo Free version was made public last year and I’m not sure how PC Mag guys missed it. It’s doing great for me.
• Launchy: Quickly from command line kinda interface reach all your apps, files, folders, and custom actions as well. It’s smart to know the preferred apps as well.
• Google Reader: Read all your favorite blogs and news sites from one place, accessible where ever you go. Tag and categorize the feeds, search through them as well, and share them.
• Google Desktop: The best and most efficient way to search all your computer, emails, chat, web history and more, on the fly. Alas, for some reason it doesn’t work on my home PC :(.
• Geni: Build your family tree. Share it with family members and let them add to your tree. Ofcourse, this could be a more serious privacy infringement than Facebook someday!

Trust me there is a lot more, but I will jump to a selected list of softwares I am yet to look into.

Interested In:

• ThreatFire AntiVirus: Seems to detect suspicious behavior and blocks it, rather than depending on virus signatures which is more of reactive approach to new viruses.
• EULAlyzer: This is quite smart thinking. It goes through those long Terms & Conditions detecting weird words. Like if a program involves installing ad programs on your computer, while we usually tend to accept all unaware.
• Hotspot Shield: Create an instant virtual private network (VPN) tunnel between your laptop and the router at any Wi-Fi hot spot to protect your data from snoops on the public airwaves
• Mint: Syncs with your bank and credit cards online, checks spending habits, and come with suggestions on how to improve your savings.Alas, no Kuwait bank supports those type of stuff, and my cash spending is considerable as well.
• Zoho: Very strong online word, spreadsheet, presentation, database, and more tool. Getting more popular every day.
• Remember The Milk: Organize and track your grocery items online. It sends SMS,email, and IM remainders. Forcing geek into family life basically
• Eraser: People think when they remove item from their recycle bin it goes ino a black hole forever. But they’re wrong. the system just removes the pointer to that file marking it as empty for future use. If someone goes and read those specific bits of data later on, he will get to your private information. Eraser lets you overwrite those private sensitive data by blank 1s and 0s. Basically a virtual shredder. It is slower than normal Delete though, so use it when you must to.
• ZamZar: Convert your files online from/to any type for FREE.
• GizmoProject: Skype competitor offering free peer-to-peer, over internet phone, and video calls, based on open standards.
• Prism: This is a new thing from Mozilla still in the labs. The idea is that you basically load a certain favorite web app of yours (Gmail in my case), and let it run like any other application on your desktop.

Well, don’t let me ruin your appetite. There is a load lot more to look for, based on your interests. Enjoy, and please, do share your insight on the tools you tried before.

Popularity: 35% [?]

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Few days ago I got an email from one of the companies I deal with saying my credit card was declined. I reached home and tried again my NBK Master Card, it failed. Logging in to my NBK Online account I was not able to find my card there. But that’s OK I thought, NBK have such bugs every now and then. Calling the bank I was shocked they guy said “Your credit card is canceled”! What how and why? He said you owe us 17.5 KD, which even drove me more crazy. How on earth could you care about 17 KD when you have just canceled my credit card? Eventually he told me that all accounts with no salary must have their credit cards canceled as per new decision made by card issuing department! (I will get to my list of replies at the bottom of this post). I asked the guy to open official complain, and he was kind of shocked to hear me say it for some reason.

Anyways, next early morning a lady calls asking about the complain, and then she went on to explain that the Central Bank of Kuwait have issued that order and all banks must comply. I asked about what’s the time period to apply it, and why there wasn’t any prior notification. She simply said it’s a huge over head on us to call each customer to tell him about it, and we will be responsible during that period for any abuse of non-canceled cards. So the bank simply decided to throw the matter here on the customer, to let him figure it out him self (the hard way). I told her do you have any idea what would happen if I was outside, checking out of a hotel with a bill of 1000 KD when I found out about it? Ofcourse she replied with the usual “NO Sorry Mr we don’t mean to” kind of stuff they do best.

So today I went to showtime to pay cash after my credit card was canceled, and they confirmed they received large number of similar cases just this month. So if you are in a similar position, be ware. Since this is the Central Bank decision, why is it the bank that I hold guilty here? Well, in addition to not giving me any sort of notification, no phone call, no SMS, or not even a simple email, which can be automated if they heard of such technology, I have the following list of items as to why the bank could’ve been more considerate before canceling my card:

1. I have been a regular client of the bank since I started working. Only when I joined a KIPCO company I was forced to move to Burgan Bank (talk about some Anti-Trust here, but it’s not the U.S. alas) and they know it. Even at that time, my social and rental allowance used to go to NBK all the time. And all the time, my balance was smooth, no salary deduction, no loans, nothing.
2. I always clear my credit card before end of month, and it rarely touched 100 KD.
3. When they canceled my card, it had 17.5 KD on it, while my balance was going on steady 4 digits number for months. So they could’ve easily locked certain amount, lowered credit card limit temporarily, or call me to do something about it.
4. I have already joined new job and tied my salary to NBK. It’s just that the first salary takes time to come in.
5. I called the lady after to request a refund for my credit card, as it was canceled and I already paid for 1 year. 3 months left on the expiry date. I mainly called to see how they react not to bother for few KDs. Guess what? She never called back it’s been more than 24 hours and we are going into the weekend now.
6. A friend of mine who never had salary before still has his NBK credit card running! So it’s not immediate cut of all accounts, they could’ve tried to be more careful how they do it then.
7. They claim they are contacting their clients gradually regarding the matter. It’s been more than a week since my card was canceled and I am still waiting for this SMS message to come. Guess they used local mail instead. I will make sure my grand children read it.

So have you had any similar issue? If so, what was your bank reaction? I am hoping some banks took it on their responsibility to be a bit more proactive.

UPDATE: You can read this older post from K.TheKuwaiti with load of useful comments, don’t waste them. In summary, NBK employee got in defending his bank that they can’t call or notify each and every customer (not even by SMS), and others noted that Al-Ahli had a good customer service, they and KFH have both notified their customers by phone and/or SMS. I have to say, I am shocked by the two banks. As I know, Al-Ahli is pretty bad, and KFH usually are bad as well in those procedures. I was naive thinking they all should learn from NBK.

UPDATE 2: A friend of mine told me something that makes the matter worse. He said this law was made by Central Bank of Kuwait last year, and was supposed to be enforced this Jan or Feb. I am waiting for link from him, but he seems pretty sure, and if that’s true, it means banks had several months to prepare and notify customers, but they preferred to make the most out of it and then cut us off. I tried to search Q8Ba7th and this is the closest I could get. A news back in March 2007 where Central Bank ordered banks to treat credit cards like ordinary loans, and thus ofcourse, you need salary to have loans. The story also raises the point about non-salary income. Why would the government assume all people’s income is through salary? They want to encourage free open business and then they do this. So stock owners, real estate business owners, free lancers which sometime make loads of money are all cut off? So what should I do if I am doing free open business?

Popularity: 38% [?]

(2 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)

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Software crash and failure are indispensable part of Windows since the very beginning. When it happens I usually immediately click close and restart my program, and NO I do not Send Error to Microsoft. Why? Once I did for some media player and the solution came back quick:

Problem Cause: Media Player

Problem Solution: Remove media player

My Solution then: Remove whole Windows!

Now the problem is not over with your program shutting down. After that I usually start hearing my computer creating noise like it’s about to launch into space. Checking running processes I see lots of Dumprep.exe. A Microsoft non-essential process for 3rd party applications that writes errors to text file and request to send it to Microsoft. The problem is that these non-essential logging-only processes take over all CPU resources and just keep running until you kill them.

Funny thing is Microsoft have an article on how to remove it, but it claims that this is a workaround to overcome most likely hardware issues or damaged registry entry. It doesn’t explain however why the process keeps running forever and not die! I am following their article and yet the two methods didn’t help :P.

Popularity: 45% [?]

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I did actually finish reading my first novel from over a decade, except the one I got as a task in college which was ridiculous. I heard about it from a friend first and gave it a second thought. Several good reviews followed that I eventually went for it. The moment I opened the book I could see it’s the kind of small simply written, clean and tidy book without any drawings. A book that you can easily finish in one day. This was a bit of a relief for me, as I am a lazy novel reader and my eyes get tired from reading quick. The storyline is not something so extraordinary with lots of twists as in Harry Potter or many others. Yet, the real purpose behind the whole story is what’s amazing. I don’t want to spoil any part of the story on the readers, but the story couldn’t come for me at a better time. I am taking a risky move in an attempt to seek a better living and achieve a big dream of mine. Something inside me just keeps pushing and calling for that dream. I have decided to follow it. I have decided to pursue what the writer calls “The Personal Legend”.

I would definitely suggest the book for both motiviation and inspiration. After you go through the story, you make the choice of what you want to do with your life.

Popularity: 39% [?]

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Isn’t Gmail just an amazing service? It has spread so fast and became almost a standard. Just like Hotmail used to be in the VERY old days. Sad fact however, Google same as many other sites tend to keep away from customer emails as much as they can, although what drives company best is customer feedback. Gmail it self had massive customer feedback before it was launched. This was to help them address what people really need from their email service.

What Gmail and many other popular sites does is take the customer first through the common problems topics. If customer can’t find it, they ask him to try Gmail discussion group, if he can’t, he would go through one of the Help topics and then click Contact Us at the bottom as he can’t find what he wants. He is then taken to a page to choose what kind of support he needs:

Clicking Get Help with Technical Issue should open contact form. But I found out this is no longer the case. Click it and you are taken to the troubleshooting page, and from ther, you have to go through series of questions until you end up with final solution. Only some of the questions end up with possible contact form. Many others don’t have and simply consider the problem solved or asks you to go to the Google Groups to search for an answer. If you are lucky, you will either find your solution or get to the contacts page. But what if you’re not? I noticed also the contacts page has certain parameters attached to define where you came from:

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=bugs&ctx=bugflow_chat12

So even going to the contact page from a different question may not give you the help you hope for and they might consider it inappropriate question. Now I can understand such companies receive massive amount of support emails, most already have been answered many times. But this is not a way to treat valid concerns. If you want to know why, search Google Groups for contact gmail and see what you get.

Popularity: 83% [?]

(3 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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For the foreign reader, Kuwait is a small country on the coast of the Persian (Arabian) gulf in the middle-east. Despite it’s small in size, Kuwait is estimated to be holding %10 of the world’s oil reserves. Being so rich in oil has made this small country one of the most consumption and least productive societies. It was two decades the elite among the gulf countries around it. Now and gradually, all countries around us have improved while we managed to go lower and lower. We simply had a lot of money to even care about the future. Some day we will wake up and see our oil wells are not pumping any oil and it will be too late.

Now, back to the subject. Following the power crisis we had last year, and very often a scheduled power and water cut on citizens was enforced, this year some people did not waste the opportunity and started a silly huge massive campaign called TARSHEED to increase awareness of lower power consumption with the slogan “The solution is with increasing awareness”!. This is a complete joke for me and a silly thing to say. Right now, you see those campaign ads in the street, on TV, newspaper, and the more silly thing is, on every Kuwait TV Channel you see this power-meter at the bottom-right:

So in case, for any reason that I can’t even find an example for, when you are watching Kuwait TV Channel, you will see a power meter indicating where are we on power consumption level. Yellow means beware, Red means turn everything you don’t need off! And they will start calling you to say your power consumption is high, lower it. Good God, what about your level of planning? Don’t you think it needs attention to? Now I won’t say the campaign did not make some people more alert, but the reasons I say it’s a joke is:

• Kuwait has %10 of world oil reserves and we have to worry about power!
• Kuwait is known of lending countries money and never taking it back. Most of these countries did not stood up to Kuwait during Iraqi invasion. Another thing to note. So we are not lacking cash money.
• Kuwait had built complete infrastructures and projects for neighbour Arab countries while they ignore their own.
• The Tarsheed campaign has a budget of 10m KD. Thats over $35.5 million dollars! Can you believe a country would spend so much to aware 2.5m people just to lower their consumption? Someone is making quite a lot of money from that campaign and the government mistakes.
• The increase in power and water consumption was known and ignored for decades. Few years back a group of consultants from outside were brought to study the power generation upgrade plans, and whether they were necessary or not. The report did not say they were necessary only, but they are not enough for the years to come. So what did the ministry of power do? NOTHING. Absolutely nothing.
• Now that it’s too late, power generations are air-shipped from all over the world, that the world’s largest cargo airplane landed in Kuwait Airport (somehow!).
• The companies who are coming for saving us are being penalized with thousands of KD for every day delay. Now that’s normal by it self, but if you are so much caring about deadlines, you got a hell lot to explain.
• Statistics say that most people in Kuwait don’t pay their power and water bill, and yet, no one gets cut from the services. Increased Awareness here for paying users is “Don’t pay for something you can get for FREE”.
• Result from not paying for years summed up into huge bills (even though prices are discounted for power and water)  and people started making legal demands in the parliament to wave away the current bills! Why, and for what good reason? And about the people who were good paying customers?
• The calls were heard and a credit of 2000 KD was made for every citizen for power.
• Few years later after giving 2000 KD credit, we find out we lost power even though we are regular paying users! Why? Because the people who were not paying for years are overusing it! Now we should all behave and reduce our power consumption! We have a saying in Arabic “You cannot give what you don’t have”. So why did you give credit when you actually lack the power it self? Just cut it from non-paying users. You will increase awareness of power value then. Problem solved! No need to pay for campaigns, make money instead.
• Tarsheed campaigns have guide rules: Set your air conditioning to 25 degrees C. Kuwait easily reaches 50 degrees at midday so what the hell would 25 degrees do me? I can turn it off and it will be the same inside.
• Campaign also asks: Do not use heavy power consumption equipment during peak hours (midday hours). So no PS3 or XBox 360 at the time. No washing clothes as well. No, No, No.
• Huge government and corporate buildings have all their lights on when they actually leave work at 2:30 PM!
• Most power consumption comes from oil factories and wells. The percentage of human power consumption is so low relatively that makes the difference so negligible.
• Tarsheed Ads in the street are in six different languages. Now in Kuwait, the two known languages are English and Arabic. If you don’t speak any of the two, you are most likely a low-income person who is trying hard to make some money to raise his family. Most those people live in groups and they will be lucky if they have a TV. Let alone that they are outside the house most of the day. So what good does the campaign do?
• Summer games are made and you can watch them on Kuwait TV. They play water contest games and in the end they ask you to follow Tarsheed in lowering water and power consumption.
• New tall buildings and large shopping malls are opening and rising every day. Kuwait wants to open to the outside world when it’s not capable of handling people inside it.
• The Ministry of Power in Kuwait have asked the Ministry of Education to postpone school openings  next year for 2 weeks for the temperature to go down a bit and avoid disastrous power failure. So now, the power needs controls education. And the power problem will not be solved until next year as well! Not even improved. Wonder if they will ask government to cut down working hours. That would be at least something useful :).
• When Kuwait is trying to install new power generators, people from inside tell, the problem is bigger. The infrastructure it self cannot handle that much capacity and needs to be changed!. This explains the request sent to postpone schools.

I could go on and on with the list, but I am afraid I would not stop. I did not only come with problems however. I have a solution.

Solution: OLPK (One Laptop Per Kuwaiti)

The $99 One Laptop Per Child would work best for us here I say. Laptops are lower power consumption than PCs, but this one is even better. It has no power consumption and uses manual crank to charge it. So let’s do a simple quick math to see how this would work:

• PC along with it’s monitor consumes up to 175w. Sleeping time its 35w. Let’s say it’s 90w on average.
• 10m KD Tarsheed campgain -> $35m
• OLPC Price: $99
• Number of Laptops with Tarsheed budget = Budget Campaign / OLPC Price = 353535 units
• Power Consumption Saving = Average PC Consumption * # Units = 35.5 Mw.

Not bad at all when the guys freak out for 100 Mw increase. And it’s a permanent solution without any campaign headaches.

Popularity: 70% [?]

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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