Posts filed under 'General'
After being bombarded with FOREX ads all over the internet, it seems you cant dodge those ads anywhere you go even if you have any kind of Ad Block, I finally caved and decided to try this FOREX thing using virtual money (Practice Account).
One of the easiest and friendliest user interfaces seemed to be ETORO, having both novice and advanced modes. So long story short I tried it for few hours and gave it a long thought and I decided that its an interesting thing to learn more about before jumping on with real cash. Yet I later caved again and wanted to deposit some money but not to go crazy and try to take it slow.
The next day I get a phone call from ETORO middle east customer support, and I was amazed that he spoke Arabic, although talking about FOREX in Arabic was awkward but I had a long chat with him, and he kept going on and on how etoro is the best invention on the net (ya right), I didn’t mind it as I was eager to know more although I knew he just wants to make a sale.
Everything was fine until I asked him a question about money transfers via credit cards and PayPal and if they support it and so on, the second I mentioned PayPal he went crazy, and asked me what’s my nationality I told him “I am Jordanian”, so he went mad again and started insulting all Jordanians!!! that we are cheap and etoro is not for “my” kind of people!! So I taught him a lesson on how to treat future customers and ended the call.
Just minutes before his call I was thinking seriously to deposit $500 dollars to try it out, and also to try the “Islamic” accounts, but after that unprofessional rude unacceptable treatment how can I do so?? Few days later I am chatting with a friend and FOREX came up and he told me nearly the same thing happened to him too!!
What is wrong with these people? Are they expecting FOREX professionals to talk to them? or are they expecting new users to deposit thousands of dollars from the first try? Their whole pitch is that they are user friendly and that their system is “EASY” for beginners?! Actually their minimum deposit is $50 US Dollars. Although I think etoro is an attractive and simple system yet they really need to seriously filter their customer support employees for the middle east and employ those who are pro and who knows how to effectively and respectfully communicate with their customers.
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July 24th, 2009
Since the rise of the internet I always heard of projects of online universities, virtual universities, online only universities and even FREE online universities. But every time the end result was disappointing, with some of those projects either ridiculously very expensive, not accredited or the project simply gets cancelled for funding issues.
So that is why when I heard about the UOP “University of the People” I was not that shocked, and I just thought it will be the same old story, big idea with disappointing implementation. And don’t get me wrong it still might lead to that result, who knows? But this time this feels a bit different.
Few years ago many universities made their course materials available online for free, video lectures, audio lectures, slides, notes and even assignments. The leading university who took this bold move was MIT “Massachusetts Institute of Technology”. Many other universities followed MIT’s lead such as Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard, UCLA, Yale, Washington and many more.
The University of the People is a non-profit university, its main goal is to give the chance of higher education to all people around the world for free or very low prices. The university is mostly comprised of volunteers, professors, librarians, master level students, computer programmers and professionals.
The university is still not accredited, but this is normal as it is just starting and it needs to follow number of rules and get evaluated to be able to get accredited. The university is going to be offering two undergraduate degrees, a BA in Business Administration and a BSc in Computer Science. More bachelors degrees and masters degrees such as MBA is expected to be added in later stages.
The university is accepting now applications from students around the world, but in the start they will only accept 300 students, the plan is to reach to 10 thousand enrollments within 5 years. The fees are minimal, for enrollment it will range between $15 to $50, and for exams between $10 to $100, it all depends on where you are living.
On the 24th of April 2009 the UOP started accepting enrollment applications, and on 14th of May 2009 a new website will be launched. 30th of June 2009 the enrollment deadline for the fall semester. 20th of July 2009 the notice of acceptance to UOP orientation courses. 9th of September 2009 the Fall Semester starts.
At the moment the best way to contact the university is via email, although they provide a phone number but you will have to be very very very lucky to get a human to talk to you, 99% of the time you will be forwarded to voice mail. You should get a quick reply to your email during the weekdays.
One reason a lot of people are optimistic for this to work is that the peer-to-peer learning experience actually exists online, according to a survey by the Sloan Consortium (a nonprofit group devoted to integrating online learning into mainstream higher education) around 4 million students in USA took an online course in 2007. The founder of UOP sensed the power of peer to peer learning while working on www.cramster.com which is an online study community that offers help for students on their college homework and assignments.
Of course if the right tools are available and the community is well built and the professionals are there to help, this could be a dream come true, this could revolutionize online education. But for this to fully succeed a lot of factors should work together perfectly to reach to the kind of success this kind of idea deserves. Many people who are eager to study and get higher education will be happy to hear this news, people who missed out on education, this could be their second chance. This could change lives, we just have to wait and see.
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May 8th, 2009
On my clock it was 2:49 AM when I felt the tremors in my room, I was reading my favorite blogs and I felt the bed shaking and then I looked at the mirrors in front of me and they were shaking, although these kind of tremors became more normal during the past few years, yet I still do freak out and panic whenever they happen because I keep wondering if this could be the BIG one.
As usual I quickly went to the USGS website to check what happened but it was still not reported, then I checked twitter where I found couple of people asking the same question I had, DID YOU FEEL IT?
Maps after the jump…
View My Saved Places in a larger map
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May 8th, 2009
Well i was having this issue on Firefox 3 and did quite a bit of reading up on the issue and tried the suggestion at Firefox Copy & Paste Bug: (Not) Fixed!!, with no luck and then i read through Copy & Paste problem with FireFox 3 (STILL NOT SOLVED After all!!! ) and noticed that a number of the people who had this issue had IE Tab installed. So when someone mentioned disabling addons, i disabled all of them and tried copying and pasting and it worked fine, so one by one i enabled them and thinking that IE Tab maybe the cause i enabled it the last and it was the problem.
The weird thing is that the problem wouldnt happen on all pages, but whether or not the page has the problem you can always Ctrl+A and Ctrl+C to copy the whole contents of the page without any problem. Well i was using IE Tab 1.2 because it was the last version that didnt crash firefox when i switched views from firefox to ie (of course i used MR Tech Toolkit to make that possible). So i decided to upgrade to the latest version of IE Tab (1.5) to see if it crashed and it did. I thought it maybe because of another addon was conflicting with it and that didnt help either, so i’m back to square one. So i have the choice now whether to enjoy copying/pasting or use IE Tab. Hope this solution helps someone. 
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March 25th, 2009
For the last couple of days a friend has been bringing their laptop over to my place for me to try and clean this darn msn virus/trojan, which seems to be one tough SOB because everything i have tried hasnt worked. The laptop (Windows XP SP3) has AVIRA AntiVir for antivirus and i have installed and scanned the pc with every single anti-spyware/anti-malware software out there, which includes Ad-Aware, Spyware Terminator, Super Antispyware, Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware, Rootkit Revealer, and Spybot – Search & Destroy which i chose from Download.com’s top 20 list and from Filehippo’s Anti-Spyware category . Unfortunately none of these great removal software was able to find or remove it.
Well this new MSN virus/trojan posts messages to your contacts like the ones found below.
YOU ARE ON THE FRONTPAGE OF THIS WEBSITE!! http://www.gallery-pictures.com
NO FUCKING WAY!! LOL WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN UP TO?! http://solox99.photodropperz.com
how is this possible?! i just found u through my profile (?!?!?) http://sarfar.gallery-pix.com/
What the virus/trojan does is send links to what seem to be an MSN login page asking you for your email and password for the purpose of “spread the word about this new 100% real and upcoming Messenger Community Site” which is stated in there terms of use at the bottom of the page. The links sometime have the infected user’s msn username in the subdomain (ex. http://username.gallery-pix.com) and will always look like the image to the right with the heading “PICS FOR MSN FRIENDS v2.0c” or “Pics & Photos 4Frenz v.2.5″.
Alternatively, the messages will link to a sex dating signup webpage with the title “Meet Real Sex Partners TONIGHT – JOIN FOR FREE! — Swingers, Free Adult Chat & Adult Personals Site” which are found at the http://www.fastxxxnow.com/new4/ and http://www.fastxxxnow.com/new5/.
Google Help
After some checking on google, it picked up some of the post messages from what seems to be a group board at this chinese website http://www.365groups.com/
After doing some more digging in google i found a discussion on a dog bulletin board about it.
http://www.labradorforums.co.uk/ftopic-57428-days0-orderasc-0.html
The infected person stated that they formatted the pc and it still didnt solve the problem as the virus/spyware seems to have attached itself to MSN.
Removal Attempts
So after all the scanning with anti-virus/spyware/malware, i decided to remove MSN messenger and all its dependances and installed them again. Didnt help. I tried the various MSN removing softwares like MSN Virus Removal, MSN Virus Cleaner, and IMP Fix suggested in the dog bulletin board with not luck.
Infected Domains
Below is a list of domains which have the same MSN login page.
http://www.areyou-onthisphoto.com/
http://www.dontstayin-pics.com/
http://www.flicker-photoz.com/
http://www.flicker-pics.com/
http://www.galleri-support.com/
http://www.galleryshotz.com/
http://www.greaterpics.com/
Infection Behaviour
My friend told me that when she was infected that MSN Messenger would continously disconnect and reconnect and it seems within the time it was disconnection and reconnecting that the virus/trojan would send these messages to her contacts. That is what she told me but i have no way to verify it, but one thing to keep in mind is whether the virus/trojan is sending the messages to your contacts when you are online or not, and you can know this by the date and time stamp MSN Messenger attaches to each chat post.
Update – Finally Removed
Well what i noticed when i signed into my own MSN Messenger (Windows Live Messenger) account from my friend’s infected pc, that it wasnt sending out the same type of messages to my contacts, which lead me to believe that the account itself is infected and not the pc. So i did some more digging around and was able to finally remove the darn thing by doing the following (not sure what part of this did the trick though). I ran Rootkit Revealer and noticed it brought up MSN Messenger results in the
C:\Documents and Settings\user account\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Messenger\email@host.com folder
(of course “user account” and “email@host.com” will differ for you on your pc), which you wont be able to reach to in window explorer unless you have hidden files and folders showing [instructions how to do this]. So in that folder i simply deleted all the files and folder. Then i noticed that MSN Virus Removal suggested the changing of my password, so i did that. It must be one of these two that did it but i believe the changing of the password would have done it, but i wont know for certain unless she gets infected again. Hope this helps someone out there and if so, drop me a comment below.
2nd Update
Would like to thank everyone who commented and was happy to hear from all those who were helped by this post as i never dreamt that it would be so popular. Well most people said the changing of the password worked, so do try that first before the removal of the files from the computer. I came across a good blog on how to remove some other windows live messenger viruses, so i case you werent able to find a solution with what i have given here, do check out this post.
http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/06/10/clean-and-remove-windows-live-msn-messenger-virus-removal-tools-or-msn-fix/.
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March 18th, 2009
At first I would like to thank all those who emailed and asked what’s wrong, and why ibrahimo.com lately is not as usual. Well I had couple of issues before and during the holy month of Ramadan, and then after Ramadan by around ten days my Toshiba Qosmio G30 stopped working properly, the screen would melt (as seen in the image) just after few minutes from booting. Later I find out it was the Nvidia video card which is embedded on the motherboard. After calling Toshiba (Al-Futaim) here in Dubai I gave them my notebook’s model number and an explanation on what was happening, and they quickly and over phone told me what was the problem, they told me they needed around a week to order the card from Germany!!
That was not the funny part though, I could not stop laughing when I was told that if I had warranty for one year it would be expired by now and I will need to pay something between 3500 to 4500 thousand dirhams!!!!! The notebook itself cost me something like 6500 thousand dirhams. So later I found that I was covered til 2010 and the repair will be done for free.
I was not posting on the blog as normal during the past 3 months, this blog is still considered semi-personal, I will post my views and opinions on Technology, Sports, Politics and TV. New improvements will be implemented soon. So stay tuned…
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October 25th, 2008
I became suicidal today, yes, this was the worst 2 hours dealing with customer support in my life. I call customer support of many companies, there are great ones and there are bad ones, DU is simply THE WORST.
Two Hours and I still did not get any info. Yes, I repeat I have spent two full hours and I still did not deal with my issue, I did not get any info, at all. The thing started when I got the "DU Call Select" device, I think they call it "Autodialer", am not sure. The phone number which was printed on the device and in the manual was 800155, so, silly me, I called the number and chose the Arabic language, after that I waited and waited and waited and…. you guessed it WAITED. I tried my luck in the English language hoping some human might answer and I waited and waited and oh! I suddenly heard a voice, could it be a human voice I said hello and the employee said hello… YESSSS!! At Laaaaaaast….
My dream came true and I reached someone and when I asked the first question he said "please wait" and the same obnoxious music started playing AGAIN, he didn’t even wait for me to say a word. I was thrown from one employee to another, don’t forget that until this moment I still did not ask any important questions this was only me starting a conversation. Anyway, eventually I reached another employee who was shocked why I am stressed and shouting, I told him why I was pissed and he said "oooh! you called the wrong number, you should have called 04-3905555" those are the ones who deal with landlines, but I made it perfectly clear I did not want help in "DU Land Lines" I want help in "Du Call Select" which has a device that when connected to regular (ETISALAT) landline you can call in DU’s rates.
He totally ignored my point and told me he is 100% sure that calling 04-3905555 will end my problems. So I called the number and after chatting for couple of minutes the lady tells me that they are not the ones who deal with this service and they deal only with DU Landlines and broadband and TV!!! So… She gives me another number, I call them praying that they can actually help or even answer my first question, but when I call them the guy says "Oh, I guess you made a mistake…", so I tell him "Don’t tell me that this is the wrong number, please do not give me another number", he laughs and say "well if you want help you should have called the number printed on the device, 800155"!!!!. I hangup, and laugh hysterically, non-stop tears run out of my eyes and I keep on laughing for around 15 minutes until I get myself under control and decide that this should be shared with my blog visitors & subscribers.
I think it is really a big big SHAME that a company such as DU has this low quality customer support, I believe that 800155 should be able to help current or potential customers in any matter ever, I like Etisalats new approach where calling 101 will lead you to each and every aspect and departments of the company. I am not saying that Etisalat customer support is fantastic but for sure they are million times better than DU. I also think that with DU not having such a great mobile service as everybody actually keeps complaining on the weakness of the network and mainly how crappy the reception is, I would have thought that they would be having a better customer service . Thank God that I do not have a DU card, my father and brother got it and they keep on having nervous breakdowns at least once a week.
Note: Please share any of your positive or negative customer support experiences with any company, especially Du or Etisalat.
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October 8th, 2008
A 35-article law includes all procedures concerning a mortgage in Dubai was issued by His Highness Sheikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai. The goal for issuing a mortgage law is to better regulate the emirate’s booming real estate sector.
According to Marwan Ahmed bin Ghalita, chief executive of Dubai’s Real Estate Regulatory Authority “the law is basically covering the mortgage procedures in Dubai”, this is an effort to protect the rights of lenders and borrowers and to improve transparency. The Mortgage law will come into effect after 60 days from its announcement.
The new law states that mortgage contracts must get registered with the “Land Department” of Dubai. The size of the loan, the repayment period and the value of the property must be specified. The law also states that the mortgages that are taken out on properties in Dubai can only be sold by registered financial institutions and also should be insured.
Full financial documents should be presented by the borrower and lender. “It gives more confidence to the lender and gives more security for banks” Marwan Ahmed bin Ghalita said. Dubai started allowing foreign investors to buy properties in Dubai on a freehold basis in 2002.
Since then the mortgage business grew rapidly. Back in July Standard Chartered warned that the prices of the still under construction real estate will be inflated due to speculators in the market betting on quick gains.
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August 21st, 2008
An amazing advertisement that is really so good that it makes you want to help in any way you can. It is to spread awareness on the issue of water problems in poor countries, as the ad said 1.1 BILLION which is the same as the population of North America and Europe wash with, bath in and drink dirty water EVERY DAY!! Those who want to help can get the full info from WorldVision.org .
You can watch an interesting 3 minute documentary on the this matter from the same website.
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July 22nd, 2008
Previous Posts
Tremors were felt at around 3:00pm Dubai local time, at first I thought it was only me but I confirmed it with family and friends. It lasted few seconds, but sure felt as minutes. The source is a 6.1 magnitude earthquake in Bandar Abbas in Iran. In Dubai tremors were felt most heavely in tall towers.
