BlogAllAlong

PS3 Green Light On and System Won’t Start

Bashar — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 04:15:02 +0000

I had this weird problem yesterday knowing I have not done any video setting changes, nor recall a pending software installation. When I start the PS3, green light comes up and then nothing happens. Insert the Game into the slot, blue light blinks and again nothing happens. No video, no sound, and no, it’s not output setting problem as many others have guessed in forums. Try to assign your wireless controller and you’ll know. It doesn’t. If it was on, output and controller assigning I assume should be two separate things.

Symptoms:

On start, PS3 Green light comes up but nothing happens. No sound or video
Insert game or any disc into the slot, blue blinks and again nothing happens
Try to assign wireless controller, nothing happens.
Try restart the console, unplug it for a while, or keep it on for long time again does not solve the problem.

I was hoping for some reason it’s replaceable hardware failure rather than software one in a closed box like this. I didn’t know about the system restore feature.

Solution:

With the PS3 in Standby mode (Red light on), press and hold the Start button until you hear a single beep, followed by double beeps.
Connect the controller using USB cable and press the PS button on the controller.
Now, the system restore screen (or whatever they call it) will come up like this
You have several options here for restoring the system, some will unfortunately wipe up all your data, others will make you lose the file naming. For me, I tried the option top-bottom and eventually had to do the Restore PS3 System. Luckily, all I had were demos, trailers, and game saves. only game I was really playing now was Prince of Persia. I felt terrible still though, but much better than if I was playing Ninja Gaiden or MGS right? Or let’s say a game Fallout!

Sharing it for others with same misfortune. Guess we’ll need the PS3 included in the backup plan then.

Don’t believe Apple Ads You Fool, says Apple

Bashar — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 03:50:00 +0000

This is Apple’s official legal response to a lawsuit regarding false iPhone advertisement and misleading customers by saying ”twice as fast for half the price” compared with the original handset, when reality is, it sucks for many people and they’re disappointed.

“Some parts of Apple’s 32-point rebuttal say that the company was being truthful. But one paragraph says, in effect, that anyone who believes what the company says in its ads is a fool” Source

Well, so much for what they call Jesus Phone. It was all a big lie after all.

Mothers Are Obsolete?

Bashar — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 09:43:00 +0000

Mother is the source of birth, and it’s the source of passion, care, and love. Naturally however we grow to be more and more independent, but no matter how far we go, we come always saying “There is no cooking like mom’s”. This Chinese Japanese robot however could make things different for the next generation (watch out new mothers, you have a touch competition) as it can manually cook thousands of Chinese dishes, and is very capabale of doing delicate manual tasks. (No, it hasn’t been tested against Kuwaiti machbos and others yet). Watch the video below of the robot manually and intelligently assembling a camera from small parts.

Take the time to check source link for more info.

What are the opening hours of viva.com.kw?

Bashar — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 12:47:28 +0000

Dear VIVA,

I have came across the news you are starting real operation on Dec 3rd, which is a great news when many people seem to be complaining about existing telecom operators’ unreliable coverage. Hopefully your firm can raise up the standards in the market.

I am trying to reach your site now as I did several times before, however this is what I get

Which made me wonder about your regular site working hours. Would you be so kind to include them in your next massive public ad campaign so that we can see what you have?

Kind Regards,

Bashar

P.S.: Somehow I don’t see the coverage problems going

Eighth Digit Revisited

Bashar — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 12:21:47 +0000

So I didn’t wait for next week to re-do the test of the Eightg Digit Curse. Nothing better to do in weekend right! :). The result however was contrary to last time. I called 3 consecutive times, twice at stationary (remember physics?), and then once while driving. What was different? Could it be under heavy load at night, as I usually call at night, and this time it was Saturday morning? Maybe. This will have to wait until next week :)

The one thing I’m sure of now is, I remember I frequently faced similar problem before calling Batriq from the same area and time.

The Curse of the Eighth Digit

Bashar — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 06:07:47 +0000

You would think after all this time the chaos of the eighth digit is gone, at least from the telecom companies side. Perhaps some people still got unchanged numbers, but that’s normal. Yesterday however while I was going to order my regular thursday night Batriq meal, I called “1888000″ Wataniya line only to get a message saying “you can’t reach this number, and you must add 2 to it”! I look at the number again and figure, they must’ve done something like this

if ( number.length() == 7 && isMocNumber(number)) {

add2Prefix();

}

Immediately after I left the 2nd Ring Road traffic light intersection with Fahaheel road away from the city, a second call made it. Hmm… Is it just by accident, or it the specific cell I was in? Maybe I will try again next week :D

Do you get such problems up till now?

Spam Does Not Pay

Bashar — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 14:59:42 +0000

So there I was, angry while waiting for the late company delivery when I received an Arabic SMS from sender Message. My smart phone is not smart enough to read Arabic yet (I’m too lazy to reformat it in other words), so I just saw the number in the SMS and called it from a phone line:

Me: Hello

Him: Hi

Me: Did you just send me SMS?

Him: Yes.

Me: Well! What is it? (forgot I was supposed to already know the message content, thinking this might be a friend)

Him: Yeah we do web site design if you like.

Me: (Man you so much got the wrong guy at the wrong time)

No Thank you.

Him: OK.

Me: (Not gonna let it go easy) Where did you get my number from?

Him: Oh we just send bulk SMS to all numbers

Me: Ohh… so you just disturb everyone in case some few people are interested?

Him: Well, some people are interested.

Me: Well, there are newspaper designed for ads you know?

Him: Yes.

Me: So you can use them.

Him: Yes, sorry for bothering.

Me: OK.

(I Hang Up)

To his credit, he was more decent than I thought over the phone, he took my harsh message well. However those people just don’t realize bothering thousands of people to target tens is a lot of disturbance. It drives people away rather than gets them, and website design is not like something you go searching for. Such services are all over the area.

I do not blame those spammers however. And neither do I blame the telecom companies in the first place. Their job is to maximize revenue in any way possible. If you were a manager, what would you do? The only one to blame is MOC over all of this, for taking it too easy, and not criminilizing any of those SMS Spam practices, keeping completely shut about them.

On the other hand, I was looking today at an official paper that should be signed by the ministry to clear out from the customs any routers, switches, or devices that might have to do anything with VoIP technology. It should testify not to use it for any illegal (though human beneficial) way, such as making VoIP international calls (all that MOC cares about).

I think in our 21st Century, the new slogan should be “Spam Does Not Pay”. At least, it doesn’t do as good as crime does it?

Google SearchWiki Launches But…

Bashar — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 17:03:48 +0000

So Google finally launched their SearchWiki service to the public, and right now, anyone who is Googling while logged in to his Google Account should get options to Promote, Remove, and add comments to the specific result.

That may not be something really people wanna do all the time, but sometimes it could become useful when you’re certain you don’t want a certain result which keeps popping up. This however is throwing the intelligent search result customization part on the user him self, rather than what was expected to be a Google intelligent personalized result. I really failed to see any obvious improve in the intelligent Google search result personalization. Has anyone noticed an improve or change? For example while logging in getting better results?

Anyways, what I would really want from this service is unfortunately missing. Removing individual links is a tedious and very unuseful job I believe, rather, I would want to remove a whole domain from my results. There are many domains which require fees to access, or are full of junk, and for quite some time I have been digging for a solution to do what many other people want

They started as perhaps the best technical forum community, and then locked all the valuable content from public, charing anyone who wants to access those answers that were initially contributed by the public, for the public. (I sound like a candidate… vote for me). So I hate how their results keep popping in my face, and I really want a way to stop them. I have seen previous posts about doing it, but for some reason this option is not available anymore. You cannot block a whole domain, and what good would it do if I want to keep blocking each and every experts-exchange page!

I would guess the reason to disallow this is Google don’t wanna get into trouble. What if a site sues them for allowing people to block them. It’s unnecessary headache perhaps for Google don’t you think?

Anyways, watch the video to see what this SearchWiki is all about, and then forget it!

Gmail New Themes… Do You Like Them?

Bashar — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:39:23 +0000

So Gmail have just introduced their new Themes feature, and took it for granted you need a new one. Technically I guess we can’t argue much about it, they just changed the default theme of Gmail slightly to a bit uglier one, and made everyone aware of the new Themes feature.

Frankly, I’m usually not much fascinated by themes as I am by functional features. I did take a look however and I liked th terminal one. Quite geeky, and unusable. I just changed it to planets for now for a change, but I guess with time I’ll just realize plain and efficient theme is what I need. Perhaps just pick the favorite coloring. It would be neat though if there a template that changes frequently (theme does change every day. COOL!), for example new planet picture every day or so. One thing to note also is, middle email composing and reading screen does not excerpt the new theme, and the Settings section as well, which makes it ugly Orange over your selected theme. I guess they either missed it, or they want to maintain the feel for user awareness.

To use the new Themes feature, simply go to Settings -> Themes tab.

So what do you think of it?

Killer Joke - Just For Laughs

Bashar — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:48:28 +0000

While this is not best acting, I still find the concept funny.

Aramex, your chance to earn customers trust

Bashar — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 09:56:48 +0000

July 1st, 2008

“Dear Valued Customer,

Thank you for using our SHOP&SHIP service. Our aim is to continuously enhance your shopping experience with us.

Aramex has found it necessary to increase the SHOP&SHIP rates to offset the increase in fuel price and operating costs. Effective July 1^st 2008, our new rates will be as follows:

First ½ kg K.D. 3.000

Each additional ½ kg K.D. 2.500

We appreciate your understanding as this situation is completely outside the scope of our direct control since fuel represents a significant variable cost in the provision of transportation services.

We want to assure you that our most important objective is to continue providing you with quality transportation services that meet your needs effectively. Our customer service teams are ready to answer any query you may have concerning the rate increase or any of our services.

Sincerely,

SHOP&SHIP Customer Service Team”

Nov 16, 2008

At over $140, Aramex raised their prices because of oil price, and we could understand it back then. Now with the oil price at around $50, half what the price was at begin of this year, Aramex has the chance to earn customer’s trust back and revert back to normal prices.

Are they gonna take that chance?

Yahoo! still single and looking!

Bashar — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 15:12:44 +0000

Several months after initial agreement and testing, Google all of a sudden decided it’s too much of a hassle to fight for the Yahoo-Google advertisement deal, and simply decided to walkaway. This coming after Google was directly trying to talk Yahoo! out of Microsoft acquisition at $33 a share seems like a fiance walking away after taking away the girl from her ex-boyfriend, and now Yahoo! are re-opening the door to Microsoft talks, however with their stock price down to $14.53!

Google are usually tough in those legal battles, like when they snapped DoubleClick against all odds, or like when they stood against handing over their customer query logs. So I wonder what made them change their mind at this time. Is it that they no longer fear Microsoft acquisition? Are they relaxed now that Yahoo! stock has fallen so hard there is no way they will sell right now? Is it the fall of Yahoo profits 64% as opposed to 31% increase in last quarter profits for Google. Perhaps this’s made it a bad looking match. Or is it really true Google have just now awakened and saw it too tough to take and no longer worth it.

At all rates, Google have stabbed Yahoo! in the back hard and at a time that just couldn’t be worse, making Yahoo! now turn back begging for past love. If such an acquisition happens, perhaps only then Google would regret.

Is iTunes Genius Sidear Genius?

Bashar — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 17:07:08 +0000

You Tell Me

This would’ve been a lot easier to swallow if the name was anything below genius!

Original Link with some extra tests verifying Genius is actually DUMP Sidebar.

Wanna Plan Your Trip? GoPlanit.com

Bashar — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 09:22:59 +0000

If you ask me, this is something that might get really big and boom, and it’s already on TechChrcunch 50 Finalists. GoPlanit.com is the site to help you plan and schedule your trip A-Z. You start by specifiying your destination, and then you will get the list of top hotels, restauratans, and activities. But this is all too typical. What’s unique is, you can start planning your trip there by creating an itenary than can be public to others, or private to your self. You will specify the arrive and departure dates, then through a slick AJAX interface start nailing down what you want to do each hour of every day. You get to pick from the list of available places, or create and add your own attraction, which will show as a Recognitio award on your page. An estimated cost of the trip will be added to the net total as well if a price is associated with, say a restaurant.

What makes this travel site potential to me is:

It allows you to easily visualise and manage your trip, get some assistance from others who’ve been there while doing it.
Your trip then will be a reference for others, if you allow it, thus enriching the whole site content.
Ability to share your trip plan with the friends and family traveling with you.

I would not feel comfortable however sharing all my trip details with others ahead of time. Personally, I would keep it private, and then reedit it after my return and share it with others. In any way, the site content is still being built and gathered, so lots and lots of places will return empty results, so that’ something they should be working on, and they seem to be heading in the right direction.

A cool thing to have I guess once the site has rich enough content is some intelligence. Imagine a lazy trip planner like me saying I wanna spend 1 week in Barcelona, I like historic places, science and technology, sport, and voila! Planned trips to the Museum of City of Barcelona, some tours for science & technology museums, malls, and a ticket for the derby match as well :). How cool would that be?

If you do sign-up however, you may want to step into the privacy section of your settings, make sure you have everything as per your convenience. Otherwise, everything you do (even gift buying) is public.

Flying soon? Know your seat with SeatGuru.com

Gulf Bank Ran Out Of Cash!

Bashar — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 11:59:23 +0000

Without a close followup on the news, I’ve been hearing quite a lot about banks going bankrupt in Kuwait, and how only two or three will manage to stand up. Gulf Bank was the first to shout ou loud “We Are Sinking!”, something which forced th Central Bank of Kuwait to freeze Gulf Bank stock from trading, and I guess opening the door for more similar cases, and perhaps increasing demand for the close of whole stock market, which is something completely out of logic if you ask me. This is the market, you know the rules, you know the risks. At least, you should’ve known before you go into it. Don’t try to change the rules during the game.

So anyways, I read yesterday Central Bank is issuing guarantees to cover up bank losses, in an attempt to calm down people who are rushing to take out all their money. Regardless of this guarantees I say, if a bank is not capable enough of staying in business, they should step a side and make room for others. That same bank offered me 50 times my salary loan one year back. Tells the whole story doesn’t it?

A relative of mine went today to Gulf Bank to withdraw some money, and the bank said we don’t have money. You should’ve come earlier! Now that’s more than a good enough reason to pull my money out permanently, and it’s no rumors anymore. The bank is not capabale of giving back people’s money. Either that, or they are trying to trick people into it. At all rates, a bank at these conditions should not be running such type of ads:

Ironically, those type of ads are still running online.

Disappointing Energizer Rechargable Batteries

Bashar — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 17:22:46 +0000

I hesitated a lot before giving those rechargable batteries a shot, as I see it less convenient, and seem still expensive to rely on. I did some math and said, if they work as they’re supposed to, 4 or 6 batteries would do good for wireless keyboard, mouse, and the Wii controller as well, and from another point of view, I will be doing a little good for the Green Environment thing.

Trying it out however turns out to be a huge disappointment. They seem however to run out of pretty fast I have to change it in less than a month! It used to take longer with regular batteries. If the point is I need to always have spares and on recharge, that’s a hell of hassle to look after. I will need dozens of backup batteries, and frequent charger replacements. The concept might be good, but at least for Energizer, it’s still got a lot of work to do, and I don’t recommend you rely on it yet.

Has anyone got a better experience? I would love to know.

Give Kuwait Movies “One More Chance”

Bashar — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 16:02:30 +0000

I have sworn before times and times not to go to any Arabic or Indian movie. It’s just not my taste. Couple of weeks back however, I got an email from a friend with a link for an upcoming Kuwaiti movie in cinema called “One More Chance”, aka OMC. When I asked, he told me he was the producer of the film. Knowing how smart and multi-talented he is made me pause and have a second thought. First I was shocked as this production business came out of nowhere, and second I was considering for the first time going to a Kuwaiti movie. So I read the synopsis saying “Meshaal, the investigation officer, investigates the murder of his best friend Alaa the programmer. “One More Chance” is a Kuwaiti action comedy movie.” This is when I decided, it’s time to break my vows, and that I did.

OMC is an action-comedy short 1-hour movie that turned out to be fun, and brings new ideas and ways of thinking to the Kuwaiti movie industry I believe. It brings a promise of possible good things to come. The beginning of the movie, the intro, is one thing that will raise expectations so high it was the best part of the movie. It was done Hollywood FBI or hacking movie styles, something I have never seen done before in Kuwait. The remain of the movie however goes below the intro level, and the way the story was quickly wrapped up and ended will leave you in disappointment after the strong intro scene.

Comic scenes were partly fun, though actors could do better as comedians in action movies. You get the feeling sometimes they are hesitating to tell the joke or something. There is one scene however I bet most people would blast at as we did. Action scenes were sadly the worst. They are Indian styles, and poorly directed Indian styles. Shooting scenes were never also fully completed. Bullet is fired, but you can only try to guess where it went. I will get to why is that in a minute. Camera angles were in many occassions wisely chosen, unlike regular stuff we see in Kuwait which is just Point & Shoot. Also, some environment shots help give the viewer a feeling of the environment, which is another thing overlooked usually. Transition between the scenes is not managed professionally I have to say, as you can tell when a cut and new shot was made pretty easily. Music was in some scenes classic and quite out of focus, irrelated to the scene.

The character of the investigator was completely missing as my friend called it. You can’t tell if he is top-detective, comedian, lame, or anything else. There is just no single character for him.

One thing that was pretty smart is the trick or puzzle if you wanna call it at the beginning of the movie that was resolved at the end. This type of mystery and puzzle solving, though not very complicated, is something we don’t see in Kuwait. Everything is pretty straight forward, you are never surprised or shocked at some point. This movie gave you the Aha! moment at the end.

Another thing I liked about the movie is how they didn’t include any hot girls to attract audience. Instead, they tried to depend on the story and movie content itself. I pretty much hate the over-use of girls as the main purpose of the movie. Love is not everything. You can do a great movie without it. 12 Angry Men should be a perfect example right? Also, no girls most likely means to censored scenes ;)

Actors:

Not being a high budget meant deending on so many new and amature faces, trying movie thing for the first time. Some have shown promises, others need a lot more to work on. For me, Bin Salem was the best actor in the movie. What do you think?

What this movie Isn’t:

I agreed to go to the movie with the promise I will get an hour or two with the producer to hammer him with my review. He genuily accepted it, and that I did. I gave him the long list, chatted about the movie production and his role in it. Once you know the full details, you should know not to raise your expectations so high of the movie. First, the movie was never intended to be a real movie, but rather a short testimonial and rehearsal one instead as a proof of concept, and it was shot with very low budget, and used many voluntairly efforts. Heck the whole movie was shot using one single camera! Thus, some incompleted action scenes were overlooked. You can’t ask for much when you’re not giving anything right? This is why some bullets scenes are missing!

The fact that the movie got good impressions and motivation persuaded them to push it to the big screen. It was too late to go back and finish the incompleted scenes however. It was basically tough luck, so don’t go to the movie expecting a full real movie, but rather a short one that might be fun, and shows you a potential attempt, and a promise of possible good things to come.

As a matter of fact the producer was saying “Bashar, I am glad you are reviewing it as a movie. This was made for us as a practice only, and if there is going to be next movie it will definitely be much better prepared for”.

Another thing is, I highly doubt this movie will suit females. It seems like a pure male targeted one. Action, and IT.

Geeky Takes [WARNING: SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!]:

Being an IT person the producer said you have to see it. I did, but that comes at a cost. I will expect high IT stuff from it, just like AntiTrust. So here goes the list of Geeky Takes

Intro movie was, again, great and gave feeling of IT upcoming events.
Spyware Definition: First of all, Spyware is not so much a techy catchy thing to show off with. If you wanna show off with techy stuff, pick a more deep topic. Second and most importantly, the definition was wrong or at least incomplete. Spyware is a software that normally installs without the user awareness, that’s right. But most importantly, a spyware is a software that collects information about your computer usage and transmits it to other parties without your approval, which was missing from the definition.
What is the program about? They say it’s program for secure communication between police and investigators, however that does not make it a Spyware right? Apparently, no one really knows what the program really does.
The programmer, Alaa, used Mac to program a client based app, which was later ran on Windows laptops. While you could argue Mac was running dual boot systems, that thing was apparently not accounted for.
The programmer Alaa was too much decent looking, his desk was completely clean from any papers. No empty pepsi cans, no cold pizzas lying around. It just didn’t give the feeling of hard-core geek.
No single command line shown! Boo-Hoo!
The program did not give the feeling of being a security communication program, and it seemed to look different from begin than from the end of the movie.
Programmers don’t use mouse! At least not so often.
The identity program was kinda neat one, how it scans through identities to find the right person.
When the gang steals the program, they do the old Delete Files trick rather than steal the laptop with it’s source code, or at least shoot the MacBook to death. Apparently, no one was welling to sacrifice his MacBook for the sake of the movie. I wouldn’t :)

While the above list might seem a bit rough, I wrote every single point with the hope it will help enhanced future productions, and I really wish them all the best luck.

[END OF SPOILERS!]

Give them your feedback

The movie producer was really open and encouraging to all sorts of feedback he could get. So please, let him have it. Give it to him here in the comments. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, it’s still shown in cinemas for one more week. You still have One More Chance!

Movie Site: http://www.abdalmovies.com

Google new type of ads?

Bashar — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 23:08:09 +0000

I’m not sure if this is new to me or new to Google them selves, but those new Google AdSense Image ads really look more attractive than before.

Anybody know about this?

UPDATE: It turns out this is a new type of ad being tested by Google, where you select a template of animated or photo gallery ad, select title, logo, and collection of photos to get going. I got the option once, got an error when I wanted to finalize the ad, and now, the option is gone :(. I want it back!

Bye Bye Accoona

Bashar — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 09:45:37 +0000

Accoona.com, the site that started back in 2005 have finally given their last breath, admitting the touch competition and how hard it is to maintain such an expensive service up and running. Not that I was a heavy user of it, but I did like their Business Search service.

Fare well.

MOC Totally Screws Up With The 8 Digits Migration

Bashar — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 17:30:10 +0000

Tomorrow is the final date for migration to the eight digits numbering plan, and as per the schedule set by the Minisrty of Communications (MOC) them selves, MOC gets to do the migration at last. Nevertheless, MOC have stated several times since summer there are totally ready for this migration, and it’s just a matter of public awareness that is delaying the launch.

Now, you may call this an incident, but the details strongly suggests against it. Today, my home phone kept ringing almost every minute, when almost no one knows this number, as it’s only there for internet access to be honest. Everytime I pick the phone I get strange outcome. Once, it connected me to the Clock number 113. How come? I thought first it’s a prank. Then a second call, when I pick up, it rings as if I was calling. Third and fourth time. It kept going on. Last time there was an old lady at the other side of the phone, and clearly she didn’t know what’s going on. When she heard me on the phone, it appeared she had dialed the wrong number.

Prank? Unlikely with this variety of people I talked to. Coincidental problem? Very improbable at this rate. But at all rates, I will not just fire a conclusion.

Soon after, I get this message shouting loud and clear, 777 Emergency Hotline will not be available through MOC, and you must use your mobile operator to call them:

Now isn’t that an emergency hotline, and like the most important number of them all? Wasn’t MOC ready for this since summer as they claimed? And how could you rely on a mobile operator in case of emergencies? I know it usually does the purpose, but what if it doesn’t?

So anyways, later today I try to call from my land line my parent’s house. First I got IVR very unprofessional noisy Kuwaiti message that I think was about the move to new plan. It soon broke up. (Again, MOC was ready for this). Everytime I call I get an error, regardless if I try 7 or 8 digits.

Fare enough, I said. Being a technical I know those things happen during migration. But why didn’t they do it at late night I wonder? Those delivery restaurants must be really pissed off. So anyways, I wasn’t expecting any better. I called using my mobile phone, only to hear Arabic message saying: “Sorry, due to excess load on the network, we cannot take your call. Please try again later”

Hey… wasn’t I supposed to use my mobile phone for emergencies? I thought I am exaggerating with my example, but it didn’t last long to prove, Murphy’s law never fails you.

Great job MOC. Well done. You had written the rules all by your self, forced mobile operators to raise the funding for this migration, and then you totally screw up.

UPDATE (6:30 AM): I still can’t call 6 digits number from land lines, and guess what. Same time NBK Online Credit Card system is not working. But that’s no coincidence, NBK has a monthly regular downtime for their credit cards :(.

Be the First to Know about Google Chrome for Mac

Bashar — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 06:50:59 +0000

If you are a Google Chrome fan owning a Mac, you probably want to go here and sign-up for the Google Chrome for Mac news update, and get instant notification once the Mac browser version is out (in Beta ofcourse :)

In their words “Google Chrome for Mac is in development and a team of engineers is working hard to bring it to you as soon as possible.” I am really glad to hear about this, but I hope it’s not the reason PC Chrome is not getting good enough attention.

Chrome Save Image As Problem

Bashar — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 21:50:38 +0000

If you’ve been using Google Chrome recently, and for Windows users I don’t see a reason why you shouldn’t minimally at least, you may have noticed the problem when you try to save an image with a different than current image name. Problem is, if you rename the image to say “Mars” and click save, it will get saved as the image name, concatenated to the file extension without the dot separator, e.g. “Marsjpg”, which ofcourse would forbid you from automatic Image opening with default Image Browser.

Now this is a known bug that’s been reported since Sept 4th, and it’s still marked as Uncofirmed. I’m not sure why such a simple obvious bug is taking so long. Perhaps Google was depending too much on open source developers help, not sure. But 1 month is long enough to confirm an obvious issue. Those delays would make people lose faith in Chrome, and stop taking time reporting future problems.

Since the bug seems to take long to fix, the quick and simple work around for you and me is to write the full image name with extension, “Mars.jpg”

I can just imagine the developer working late at night to finish the Save Image As feature, and he goes something like return file_name && file_extension, forgetting the dot separator. Perhaps a refreshing Pepsi would do. Works for me :).

MOC: ISPs should protect Kuwaiti websites?

Bashar — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 09:38:52 +0000

Ministry of Communications representative in Kuwait have made an official weird announcement following several hacks on Kuwaiti websites, stating that the ministry and it’s governmental sites are not ready against hackers attacks (invitation for hackers), and then went on to explain why they are not ready, and why they can’t protect the banks and other corporation sites in Kuwait. He concluded finally by diagnosing the problem somehow as the fault of the ISPs! Saying they should work harder, and invest in providing security mechanisms for those sites!

Correct me if I’m wrong, but what does an ISP have to do with securing someone else’s website? If my site is vulnerable for SQL Injection, how is that the fault of the ISP. If my site has weak or blank passwords, if I am not patching my server with latest updates, or if my server has so many open ports inviting hackers to come in. What part of this actually relates to the ISPs?

It seems MOC was too scared of being hacked and blamed, having no clue about website security, and the actual role of the ISPs, they go on and point fingers to their “Usual Suspect”. The ISPs.

Well then, since it’s a matter of banks security, I guess that makes YouTube second priority to ISPs and MOC. Go figure protecting our sites :). Meanwhile, we will set our passwords to blank, since it’s your responsibility.

We are one shaky country

Bashar — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 09:17:34 +0000

Kuwait is an oil filthy rich country, and that’s pretty much all about it. Every week I read about a 5 year plan to change the face of the country, and make Kuwait a worldwide business centre. We read about big millions and billions being assigned for such projects, those projects we never hear or see later. I tend to avoid getting into those things, as they ruin my mood, and raise my blood pressure. The problem comes when these silly thigs I try to avoid come in my way. Or our way should I say. Our way of life.

Every day, we use YouTube to watch the news, soccer goals, Islamic lectures, technical presentations, visual tutorials for How To stuff that otherwise are difficult to explain with words, my kid loves it for watching cartoons and I use it to encourage him with educational kids shows. All of that and more. Such a service has made YouTube part of our lives, and a life changer as well.

And then, one day a guy got an email with links to some videos he didn’t like. That man happens to be in a vital position for deciding what’s right and what’s wrong. Driven wih Islamic motives, and taking the prides of a nation on his shoulders, that guy fires up a direct letter to all ISPs to block this whole service, the good and bad of it. We suddenly read about it in the newspapers, YouTube is being blocked. The order gets canceled by the minister, as it was not signed from him, and the individual effort bypassing all authorities goes unpunished. Not only that, but perliment members have adapted the story, backing this individual, and are demanding from the ministry of communications to devote time, effort, and money to fight those videos. When people are celebrating the Ramadan Eid, the perliment members have made it their top priority on the schedules after Eid already to demand an act on those videos, and have expanded their demands to reach other sites as well, or else, they will put the minister for interrogations.

The next day we hear, the ISPs are receiving letters from the ministry of communcations, which are really nothing more than individual efforts by normal people surfing the net, sending partial links to YouTube, and other offensive partial site links, such as Flickr and others, and the ministry does nothing more than stamping and forwarding them to all ISPs for implementation! To make the matter worse, the minister of communications makes an official statement that they are forming an official committe to unite their vision and statement, then start arranging with Gulf countries, then reach out for the whole Arabic and Islamic world for one big united move against the offensive bunch of videos.

Wooho… We have never seen or heard of such Islamic real uniting, and when was the last time we saw the minister really active and caring? Only when it comes to ministry money, or his chair. I wonder how dare we speak of country opening up for western world, and becoming a worldwide business centre, when few bunch of people on the other side of the world are able to manipulate our priorities, and shake our stabilities and focus, by simply uploading few silly videos.

What message are we really giving back to them? That we are weak and easily shaken country, or as a matter of fact, whole region. And what will happen if we block YouTube and other sites? Guess what, those offensive content will keep coming, and will increase as a matter of fact. People who want to use YouTube and the like will find ways around it, and those who don’t will not know about it, just as if they are looking the other way, and they will not be able to request for those videos to be removed from YouTube anymore. since they don’t know it exists. So blocking is just a fake pretending this problem doesn’t exist, and trying to disbelief the problem will always be there, you cannot stop it.

Did anyone of those demanding fight for offensive videos try to report the video as offensive to the concerned people, YouTube them selves? I have. And so have many others who are as caring and offended by the video, as those people trying to show off. They have a bit more sense of logic though. They try to address the problem, not panic and shout out loud. And guess what, the link I reported got deleted. I even tried to proxy to make sure it’s not only removed from Kuwait, it’s still deleted.

One might think this country is not moving forward, or at least not fast enough. But I believe they’re wrong. We are moving backward full speed and there is no stopping us.

Smile Everyone… Pirates of the Caribbean is not a trilogy!

Bashar — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 13:15:45 +0000

It’s hard to resist your strongest stream of income ehh? Walt Disney have announced they have signed up a deal with Johnny Depp for a fourth installment of the most succesful Disney film ever, Pirates of the Caribbean. This comes in despite of previous announcements from Disney that Pirates of the Caribbean is a trilogy only, and they would cut down on the violent movies to stick to the original Walt Disney brand.

The company also stated Johnny will feature in “The Long Ranger”, and “Alice in Wonderland”. Funny thing is, Jerry Bruckheimer had to go trough tough fights to get Jack Sparrow role to Johnny in the first place. Now, he has become like Disney’s golden boy.

Kierra have already stated she won’t be taking part in the next sequel, and frankly, after the At World’s End wrapping, I hope she doesn’t. Rumors spread before next release might be focused on the Jack Sparrw journey to immortality.

I am eagerly looking for more of this franchise, and I am all fear Disney might ruin it, as they did to every other wonderful thing they had.

Another Sea Cable Cut At Alexandria

Bashar — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 13:52:22 +0000

My friend told me there is another sea cable cut at Alexandria (Again, Egypt), and that explains the extremely unbearable slow internet today. We’ve got some great days ahead of us.

But there is one good thing from it. YouTube is technically blocked! Hey.. Is that a conspiracy? Or extreme stupidity?

Either ways dark days will come, and it will not be Happy Eid after all

Further to the YouTube Blocking Story

Bashar — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:05:52 +0000

Following up on the massive protest yesterday against what seems to be an individual irrational decision, coming from an immature person at the Ministry of Communications, Al-Jarida is providing us more details on the story. My doubts about the letter yesterday turned out to be true. The letter, which seemed very unprofessional sent by a single person, was sent by the head of control department directly to all ISPs for immediate execution, by passing the minister for approval.

The blocking was freezed yesterday for further discussions, which while good, pretty much surprises me even more. First of all, you don’t fire up an official letter to the ISPs and then reconsider. Secondly, if the letter was not signed by the minister, this letter has zero legal value, and belongs to the trash. The person who is on purpose, and still defending his ground, by passing all legal procedures, to block the third largest popular site in Kuwait, from an individual thinking (if that’s what you wanna call it), considering him self probably so smart with this crap, should be punished and blocked from his position, stripped out of all responsibilities, after showing such immature level in his management.

Kuwait is a multi-million nation, and if one small individual unkown person thinks he can run the country as he likes, think again! If you don’t like YouTube, don’t use it. However I am hundred percent positive, when this chaos is over, you could see this very same person using YouTube for his own interest.

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