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.
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?
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.
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″.
During the past four years and while watching each and every episode of Qalam Rasas I always had a feeling it will get canceled the next day. Mr. Hamdi Qandeel was very brave and sometimes I believe he was too brave, he would amazingly mirror the thoughts of millions of Arabs every week, and call things as he see it.
I think the best TV show on Dubai TV since many years and for years to come is Qalam Rasas, this show was the only thing that made people forgive the shortcomings of the Arabic media, it was a great example of free speech, whenever the Arab media would get attacked for being censored to the max, Qalam Rasas was the show that gave hope to the people that having a show that reflects their views is possible even while the governments are busy creating new rules to further cripple the media.
I wont be exaggerating at all if I say that the whole world will be watching carefully on the 4th of November 2008, wishing their favorite candidate win. The latest international polls have favored Barack Obama, and the USA polls gives him around a 12 to 13 points lead. But the race is not over, many factors play part here, McCain was down before and ended up winning the republican party nomination, then there is the Bradley Effect.
The Bradley Effect is where a white voter would say in polls he would vote to the African-American candidate but when voting in the voting booth he will end up voting for the other WHITE candidate, so basically racists being shy of their racism and lying to the pollsters. This happened in 1982 while electing California’s governor, Tom Bradley lost the elections although he was ahead in some polls. I do not believe that the Bradley effect happened or will happen to Obama, we already saw in the primaries how he hold close to the polls even in some places thought to be heavily racist, areas that has a very bad reputation with race discrimination.
So where will those who live in the Middle East watch the elections? Well, there is the free-to-air channels and the Subscription (PAY TV) channels.
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…
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….
In my opinion Tina Fey amazingly played the role of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the accent, the voice and the style. I can bet that during the first few words no one could differentiate between them. Amy Poehler as usual played Hillary Clinton. The sketch was really funny, something I do not usually say about SNL sketches. This was the opening sketch of the premiere of SNL’s new season.
I thought, like others, that Bab El 7ara Part 3 or Season 3 like some likes to call it, is the last one and the door will get closed. But those behind the series finds a great opportunity especially that the viewership of the third season did not decline, so now they have decided to produce two new seasons to be aired in 2009 and 2010. What does the director Bassam Al Mulla wants exactly, he wants us to see the grand grand sons of the series characters?
Bab El 7ara is getting more than it deserves, those who used to say that they wont watch the 3rd part because of 3abbas El Noori are actually watching, they want to know what happens to the other characters. If this goes on we could end up seeing Bab El7ara 6 and 7 and 8 and 9 and 10, Until we reach to the current time. How long will they stretch this, I don’t blame them they found the chicken which will lay golden eggs.
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…. 
