New blog

I now have a new blog called birds and stone, hope that some people find it usefull or interetsing, here is the link:

http://birdsandstone.blogspot.com/

5:33 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Fly to Jordan

I am not usually in the habbit of promoting Jordan, but I stumbled upon this video:

http://mohammedraeiblog.blogspot.com/2007/07/ultimate-promotion-for-jordan.html

The link is from my other local oriented blog.

Here is quote from the video itslef "If you ever need great medical care….fly to Jordan…it is true…"

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Wadi Rum Trip

I just came from a trip to Wadi Rum with Alaa and Maria. It was amazing. I really regret not going there before, considering that it is only three hours away from Amman, but then I never had any good company.

The camp exceeded my expectations as it was equiped with beds inside the tents and the the Zarb(food cooked under the sand in a pit of sort) which was surved for dinner every night was very delicious.

As far as the climbing and hiking. Lucky for me that I still have some of my athletic abilities as it was extremely strenous. But it was totally worth it

I did add some pics for people to see..

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World Overpopulation

I was thinking some more about the problem of world overpopulation and it's effects on the environment and that was when it hit me; why not have a Kyoto like agreement with regard to world overpopulation.

There would be a quota for each country specifying the allowed population growth. And in the same way that Kyoto deals with green house gases, countries would be allowed to have more population growth if they are below their quota and would have to pay dearly if they exceed their quota or make it up in the next cycle.

Additionally, industrial countries with low population growth rates would give some sort of incentives to countries that have a high one. This incentive would be an award based on meeting the targets which would be set for every 10yrs and would be reexamined every 5yrs to make sure they make sense.

Yes, industrial counties are to benefit more in the short run. But in the long run every one would win. Third world countries are in a way like smoking addicts, they know they need to stop their population explosion but do not know how.

The industrial countries probably did not care in the past. But with global warming and the earth's eco system going bankrupt, they should.

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An Iconvenient Truth

I forgot to add the link to help people take action. Visit this site and take action.

http://www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction/

And also these

http://www.stopglobalwarming.org/

http://www.algore.com/cards.html

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An Inconvenient Truth

Today, I went to a free screening of "An Inconvenient Truth," here in Amman and it scared the shit out of me (as it was supposed to.)

I have been an environmentally responsible person for the last 12yrs, and I never bought arguments from such books as " The state of fear." regarding Global warming not being a threat. Heck, I can experience global warming first hand;. Summers have become unbearably hot and annual snow has become a thing of the past. Hell, we would be lucky if it snowed once every 3-5 yrs.

I think a lot of people in America will wake up and start doing something about it. But as far as China and the rest of the third world, I still think that they need something to wake them up from their slumber.

In my own view Kyoto was not stringent enough on countries like India and China, who sort of have a cart blanch until around 2015.

My country, Jordan, is not better either. And despite the fact that it is a rather small country with per capita pollution slightly less than the world average, I still think that Jordan should take global warming very seriously and set an example in the region.

Many people will watch the movie and maybe not pay attention to the part regarding the world population growth. According to the movie, it took 10000 generations to get the world population from 0(2) to 2 billion, but it will take less than 50 yrs to reach 9 billion.

This is a very scary state of affairs. And in it lies one part of the solution. Personally I think that producing children in an overpopulated world is a crime. I know that in all likelihood that I will commit such a crime either once or twice. I know that it is selfish on my part, but I think I will not be able to help it.

I really think population control is a major key for this; I really think that the industrial world should threaten countries with high population growth rates with sanctions.

While experts estimate that the earth can only support around 4 billion people. My own estimates are around 1-2 billions. At this level all of them would have a very decent living standard and none would have to suffer from poverty. They would have lots of riches to share and they would not need to fight over resources.

If we want such a world for kids, we can not afford to be nice when the world is less than 50 yrs away from total destruction; it is time to stop being nice and attack the Vatican and the Islamic world over their anti-contraception, anti-abortion policies. These police along with ignorance and selfishness are what got us to this overpopulated world in the first place.

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Mr. Deity

I stumbled on this short group of episodes called Mr Deity.  It is the funniest thing to come in a long time. I already watched some episodes more than 5 times and I still find them hilarious.

The guy who wrote these is a real genius. Also the acting is not bad at all. The actress who does the role of Lucifer does an excellent job.

The fact that the Holy Ghost is called Larry is so funny.

Clip number three with the clapping is amazing.

Anyway, here is the link

http://www.mrdeity.com/

6:38 AM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Freespire

Maybe 5-6 weeks ago, I started experimenting with various Linux distributions that can be booted from a CD or run from a USB drive without affecting the system set up or changing anything on the hard drive.

Just one day before the end of the year I decided to install Freespire on my hard drive. Lucky enough, the installation was easy, and my computer can boot either Windows or Freespire.

I said it on multiple occasions, I hate M$. I hate their consumer policies, their monopolistic behavior, and ridiculous pricing. So it was very logical for me to look for other alternatives.

Freespire is a free version of Linspire(formerly known as Lindows). After using it extensively for over the last few days, I can say it is a very decent alternative for Windows.

On the plus side, it is 100%, has a one click install feature that installs programs directly from the internet called (click and run,) has a system level spell checker that runs in all applications, has a multi chat client built in, has free office like software, just to name a few.

Keeping in mind that it is a free software, one should not complain too much about the negatives and there are two minor ones. The first one is printer support, if you have an HP or a Canon that is not a big problem, but if you have other brands, it is. The other negative is language support. Arabic will be supported at the end of 2007 and translation of menu items is underway.

Overall, this a very good product. We in Jordan still do not feel the evil of M$, because most people still use pirated Windows XP or 98. Things are already changing and M$ is putting some nails in the coffin of piracy. If people here had to actually pay for office and windows XP, the cost of software will probably exceed the cost of hardware.

I read an article about Linspire offering south Korea an annual license for all the population( 50 miliion) for 5million dollars. That is a few cents per person. Maybe Jordan should get such an offer. Even at 5million dollars for 5million people, that is a great bargain. Jordan can save 10s of millions in software cost instead of paying royalties and what not to the Vole.

From now on, I think my usage of M$ products will go down by over 70% and that should make me very happy.

Here is the link for Freespire

http://freespire.org/

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I had a dream.

Last night I dreamed that I was talking/chatting with John Cleese. Needless to say it was pretty cool. Problem is I do not remember much of the details.

My other dreams involving important people included King Hussein of Jordan and President Mubarak of Egypt. At the time I did remember the details for at least a couple of weeks after I had these dreams. Alas, no such luck with the John Cleese dream.

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Most Popular Websites in Jordan

Using Alexa.com, I found the 10 most popular websites in Jordan, here goes the list:

#1 Yahoo.com
#2 MSN
#3 Google.jo
#4 Google.com
#5 Windows live
#6 Maktoob.com
#7 Hi5.com
#8 kooora.com
#9 aljazeera.net
#10 alrai.com

This list is interesting on many levels, just compare it with the list for the UK:

#1 Google.co.uk
#2 Yahoo
#3 EBay
#4 Google.com
#5 MSN
#6 BBC
#7 Myspace
#8 Amazon
#9 YouTube
#10 Windows live


The most striking difference between the two lists is that it would seem that people in Jordan have missed out a bit on the Myspace phenomena and are using instead the half as popular Hi5. In a way, it is nice to know that online "dating" is very popular in Jordan, but I think it is better to follow the rest of the world and use Myspace.

The other thing that was also missing in Jordan's top list is YouTube, it is  popular enough in jordan to make it to the top 10 list.

Online shopping and selling is not very popular in Jordan for various reasons, it was very logical not to see Amazon and Ebay making the Jordanian top 10 list. Maybe in a couple of years they would.

Assuming I stay in Jordan(and I hope that would not be the case), I would be looking forward for the day when Amazon has a huge warehouse with books and other goodies somewhere in the middle east.

3:05 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment