Mohammad Alaggan

11 Bitcoins = 1 $ !!

2012-01-31T01:03:00.003+02:00

By pure coincidence as I was running through the list of stack exchange sites I found a site called Bitcoin. I didn't understand what was it at first but when I looked it up in wikipedia it turned out to be an e-cash P2P system. Wikileaks, freenet, and another company already use it for reception of donations and for investments according to wikipedia. It even has an exchange rate to US dollars. The original paper is http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf and there are other more recent papers.
#WOW

Proof that np=mq and mn>0 implies pq>0

2012-01-20T23:49:00.000+02:00

Implicit assumptions: q != 0 (p/q is a rational number).

This is a proof that mn>0 as a definition that a rational number m/n is "positive" is a well-defined with respect to equivalence classes of rational numbers. I.e. if p/q is in the same equivalence class of m/n (i.e. np=mq) and m/n is positive (mn>0) then p/q is also positive (pq>0).

First, np=mq => np-mq=0, but since mn>0 (neither m nor n is zero), and that q!=0 (by definition), then p!=0. So one of pq<0 or pq>0 is true. Assume the former towards a contradiction. First let p>0 and q<0 and let q=-q' where q' is positive. Then 0=np-mq=np+mq', but all of these are positive, so they cannot equal zero: contradiction. Same argument for p<0 and q>0, we end up with 0=-np'-mq, but the right hand side is negative: contradiction. So pq<0 cannot be true, therefore pq>0.

مصارعة الثيران

2011-11-16T23:20:00.001+02:00

لو أتفرجت قبل كدة على مصارعة التيران حتلاقي حاجة مثيرة للأهتمام، المصارع مش عاوز التور يضربه، فبيهز الوشاح الأحمر بحيث التور يهاجم الوشاح مش المصارع، والمصارع بيبقى حاطط الوشاح بطريقة أنه لو التور ضرب الوشاح مش حتيجي الضربة في المصارع. وده هدفه الأصلي، لأن التور كدة كدة حيضرب حاجة، فتيجي في الوشاح أحسن ما تيجي فيه هو.

نفس الفكرة ديه بتفكرني بحاجات بتحصل اليومين دول. تخيلوا أن المصارع هو "نقل السلطة في ابريل 2012 مش في 2013" وأن الوشاح هو "وثيقة السلمي الحاكمة للدستور". اللي حط الوثيقة ديه مش ساذج عشان يستفز الناس بوضوح النوايا اللي تسمح للجيش بالحصول على مزايا مش من حقه. لكن حاول تحط نفسك مكانهم وشوف التفكير بيمشي أزاي:

أ- شوف يا برنس، احنا حنحط وثيقة فيها مزايا جامدة لينا
ب- بس كدة الشعب حيزعل مننا

أ- مهو بص هو احتمال من أتنين، يا أما الشعب حيزعل يا أما حيعديها، لو عداها يبقى قشطة

ب- ولو زعل ؟

أ- لو زعل يبقى حنخيرهم يا أما يحشدوا عشان نقل السلطة، يا أما عشان الوثيقة

ب- أزاي ؟

أ- بسيطة، لو حشدوا عشان نقل السلطة لأنها أهم من الوثيقة يبقى الوثيقة ممكن تعدي من غير حشد أوي

ب- طب ولو العكس ؟

أ- لو العكس يبقى خلاص نتنازل عن شوية مزايا من المزايا الجامدة اللي كدة كدة كنا عارفين اننا مش حناخدها والشعب حينام مبسوط فاكر أنه ضرب المصارع بس هو ضرب الوشاح بس

نفس الأسلوب ده بيتكرر في حاجات تانية، بس لو ركزت وفكرت فيهم. يعني مثلا في موضوع قضية الفلول، اللي حصل انه تم تخييرنا بين (1) تطبيق الحكم والتخلص من الفلول بس تأجيل الانتخابات أو (2) نمشي الأنتخابات حتى لو فيها فلول بسس متتأجلش. وكدة برضه عمل اللي هو عاوزة، ومش بس كدة، لأ كمان بقى أسمه طلع الحكم اللي كان مطلوب منه بعزل الفلول بس أحنا اللي رفضنا نطبقه...

الفكرة العامة هي أنك تخير الشعب بين خيارين، والأتنين في مصلحتك في الآخر، وده ممكن لسببين، والسببين الوقت عامل حاسم فيهم

1- الاختيارين وحشين جدا، والشعب رافض الأتنين، بس مش حيقدر يحشد ضد الاتنين في نفس الجمعة، وعلى ما تيجي الجمعة اللي بعدها يبقى الموضوع أمر واقع وتبات نار تصبح رماد.

2- يا أما برضه حطيت الشعب قدام الأمر الواقع والشعب عارف أنه لازم يختار واحده، دبسته يعني خلاص وسبق السيف العزل، بس الشعب مش عارف يختار مين، فبرضه مش حيقدر يحشد.

السبب الأول شايفينه في موضوع وثيقة السلمي، والسبب الثاني في موضوع قضية الفلول. وفي أمثلة تانية لو دورت.

وفي مشكلة أساسية، المجلس جهاز منظم، قادر على أتباع استراتيجية واضحة طويلة المدى، يعني لو وثيقة الجمل فشلت حيعيدها بشكل تاني في السلمي لما الشعب يهدى ألخ. لكن الشعب على العكس مش منظم وملوش منظور بعيد المدى وبيتعامل مع المعطيات الوقتية على أساس أنها آخر الدنيا، وبالتالي من الممكن مساومته على خيارات بنظام بالونة الاختبار، يا تنجح ويبقى قشطة يا تفشل وينسى، وتتعاد بعدها برضه بكام شهر لحد ما تنجح. عشان نعرف المجلس رايح فين وناوي على ايه مينفعش نبص على المتغيرات الوقتية بس، لازم نبص على افعالهم من ساعة ما مسكوا الحكم ونحاول نستخلص استراتيجيتهم، يعني نبص لما وراء الأفعال.

Currying with Mathematica

2011-11-16T08:32:00.001+02:00

The ad hoc way:

Curry[f_[x__]] := f[x, ##] &

a[x_, y_, z_] := {x, y, z}

b = Curry[a[x]];

c = Curry[b[y]];

then a[x, y, z] is the same as b[y, z] is the same as c[z].

The neat and fully automated way:

ClearAll[UnPattern];
ClearAll[MakeFunction]
ClearAll[CurriedDefinitions]
ClearAll[MyHold]
ClearAll[MyHold2]
ClearAll[CurryableSetDelayed]
SetAttributes[UnPattern,HoldAllComplete];
SetAttributes[MakeFunction,HoldAllComplete];
SetAttributes[CurriedDefinitions,HoldAllComplete]
SetAttributes[MyHold,HoldAllComplete]
SetAttributes[MyHold2,HoldAllComplete]
SetAttributes[CurryableSetDelayed,HoldAllComplete]
UnPattern[x_]:=Block[{pattern},MyHold[x]/. Pattern->pattern/. pattern[v_,_]:>v]
MakeFunction[param_,body_,attrs_]:=With[{p=UnPattern[param],b=UnPattern[body]},
  Block[{function},MyHold[function[p,b,attrs]]/. function->Function]]
CurriedDefinitions[fname_[args__],body_,attrs_]:=MapThread[MyHold2[#1:=#2]&,
  {Rest[(MyHold[fname]@@#1&)/@NestList[Drop[#1,-1]&,{args},Length[{args}]-1]],
   Rest[FoldList[MakeFunction[#2,MyHold[#1],Evaluate[attrs]]&,MyHold[fname[args]],
     Reverse[Drop[{args},1]]]]}]
CurryableSetDelayed[fname_[args__],body_]:={MyHold2[fname[args]:=body],
  Sequence@@CurriedDefinitions[fname[args],body,Attributes[fname]]}
  //. MyHold[x_]:>x/. MyHold2[x_]:>x

This way all you need to do is :

CurryableSetDelayed[f[a_, b_, c_], {c, b, a}]

and then you can call f in any of the following ways:
f[1, 2, 3]

f[1, 2][3]
f[1][2][3]

أربعة عيوب في الشخصية الجمعية المصرية (من مقالة لمعتز بالله عبد الفتاح)

2011-11-09T10:48:00.002+02:00

مقالة لمعتز بالله عبد الفتاح أسمها «عقوبة وعلاج تاريخيان»، في جريدة الشروق بتاريخ الأربعاء 9 نوفمبر 2011، أقتبس منها الجزء التالي:

كتبت من قبل أننى عملنا ثورة «شبيهة بنا» كما قال الصديق العزيز الدكتور إبراهيم عرفات الذى حلل المشهد العام فى مصر باستعراض أربعة عيوب فى الشخصية الجمعية المصرية تبرز بطريقة أوضح فى كل يوم جديد يمر من عمر الثورة. وهذه العيوب باختصار هى:

أولا النجاح كأفراد والإخفاق فى العمل بروح الفريق. ثانيا، عدم القدرة على إنهاء الأشياء بنفس المهارة التى بدأناها بها (مشكلة الفنيشنج). ثالثا، حب الجدل حتى حول البديهيات. رابعا غياب الإحساس بعامل الوقت والتعامل مع الزمن وكأنه مورد غير محدود.

Mathematica Snippet #1 (tiny post)

2011-11-01T01:31:00.000+02:00

Assume you have a graph encoded as a set of edges E. For example E = { a -> b, b-> c, c->f, ... }. And you want to compute the set of neighbors of some node v, not taking into account the direction of edges.

This could be done very succinctly using this one liner:

This is simply a "rule" (mathematica's lingo for function), that returns the set of vertices adjacent to v. How does it work ? It just uses the built-in mathematica function "Cases", which searches through a list for a given pattern. When this pattern is found, it will be transformed according to a given transformation.

The patter we are searching is an edge whose head or tail is v, that is we are searching for either "x->v" or "v->x", for any x. This is captured in the pattern we are searching for as "(n_ -> v) | (v->n_)". the underscore after the n means that it is a free variable, intuitively it means what we meant in the previous sentence when we said "v->x" for any x.

The second part ":> n", simply says that when this pattern is found, transform it to x. That is, if you found an edge "v->d", return "d", as this is the only part I care about.

لا تقرأني

2011-09-30T04:10:00.001+02:00

أسطر كلماتً بلا معنى ولا هدف، لأني أعلم أنك لن تقرأها وإن قرأتها فلن تعيها، وإن وعيتها فلن تعبأ بها. لماذا أكتب؟ كي لا يصدأ قلمي وتبلى كلماتي. أكتب لأن ليس لي من بديل. أجلس وحيداً في غرفتي، أصغي لهمس النسيم يشكو لي هموماً أزلية، ولا أعبأ، فهو -النذل- لم ولن ينصت لشكواي أنا.

مازلت أسطر كلماتي، ولو علمت أن عينيك تمر على هذه السطور ما كتبتها، فلا تقرأني.

قد أسير في الطرقات وأخالط الناس، ولكني لا أخرج من غرفتي، أتطلع فقط من تلك النافذة الصغيرة فيها. أين هي؟ وهل تسأل نفسك أين كوكبك من بقية الأجرام؟ يكفيني أن أعرف أنها لن تتركني أبداً؛ فلكم أفتقدت ذلك الإحساس...

لا تقرأني.

غرفتي ليست صغيرة؛ هي -أصلاً- بلا جدران، ولكني أعلم أنها هناك، حولي. آخذها معي حيثما كنت، في بلدي أو في الغربة. لا أخرج منها ولا أدع أحداً يدخلها، إلا شخصاً واحداً وقد أنتهى.

قرأتني فهل وعيتني؟

غرفتي "بتغير عليا" جداً! فهي لا يعنيها أنني وحيد داخلها، بل هي أيضا لا تدع ذلك الإحساس يفارقني حتى في الصحبة. هي تعلم أنني إن وجدت راحةً مع غيرها تركتها... للأبد. فهل أنا اللذي لا أخرج من غرفتي أم هي اللتي لا تفارقني؟

وعيتني فهل عبأت بي؟

حقاً مازلت لا أدري ماذا أكتب ولماذا أكتب. هناك صورة لا أميز ملامحها، ومشاعر تجري في أضلعي لا أعلمها. تركت قلمي يسرد ما يراه، أما أنا فلم أعي ما كتب، ولم أفهمه، ماتزال الصورة مهتزة، بعيدة. قد زادت المشاعر حدة، فهي قرأت سطوري ورأت أنفسها وتحمست. ربما ظنت مشاعري أنها وجدت مشاعراً أخرى تقضي معها بعض الوقت. معذرة يا مشاعري، ولكن لم يكن ذلك سوى انعكاس صورتك في المرآة...

كتبت لكم عبر نافذتي الصغيرة، من غرفتي الكبيرة - سجين نفسي.

2011-09-21T01:14:00.002+02:00

النسمة الرقيقة
تقفز هي، بين الزهور، تطارد تلك الفراشة الصفراء وهي تضحك. لا تنوى حقا ايذاء الفراشة، هي تظن انهما يلعبان سوياً. ربما الفراشة ظنت ذلك أيضا، فلا يمكن لذلك الكيان الرقيق أن يؤذي، وهذا واضح حتى للفراشة.يراقبها هو من على بعد خطوات، ينظر لها بعيون تفيض بالحنان. يا لحظه، ان يختار قلبها قبله فيصيران واحداً، كلما نبض قبلها بالسعادة رقص قبله طرباً. ولا يستطيع الإبتسام إلا إن ابتسمت هي، كأن عضلات ابتسامتها تتحكم عن بعد في عضلات وجهه. كلما أراد الضحك أضحكها فضحك. أغمض عينيه ليتنسم تيارات الهواء القادمة إليه من جراء قفزاتها فأقشعر جسده كأنما كان هو القافز لا هي.تنظر له مبتسمة فلا تسعه الدنيا، لا يريد من الدنيا شيئاً آخر.

الصدام مع الواقع

2011-06-27T23:49:00.002+02:00

‫تصطدم البراءة والإخلاص بالواقع عندما يكتشف الطفل حين يكبر أن النية الطيبة وحسن العشرة لا تعني بالضرورة أنه سيحيى حياة كريمة، او حتى يتزوج. حين تفقد البراءة والطيبة مردودهما الاجتماعي والشخصي، حينئذ يجد الشخص نفسه في موقف لا يحسد عليه، عليه أن يختار بين طريقين، أما الألم وأما الغش. وليست كل الآلام سواء؛ فمن الآلام ما يفقد العقل ومنها ما يدمر الفطرة حتى لا يدري الشخص الصواب من الخطأ، وحينها يغش دون قصد. فالمعصوم من عصمه الله، ولا تضمن نفسك إلا إن وثقت في رحمة الله بك واختياره لك. وإن لم يكن تخسر الدنيا والآخرة؛ فكما قال الله سبحانه وتعالى في سورة الحج : ‬وَمِنَ النَّاسِ مَن يَعْبُدُ اللَّـهَ عَلَىٰ حَرْفٍ فَإِنْ أَصَابَهُ خَيْرٌ اطْمَأَنَّ بِهِ وَإِنْ أَصَابَتْهُ فِتْنَةٌ انقَلَبَ عَلَىٰ وَجْهِهِ خَسِرَ الدُّنْيَا وَالْآخِرَةَ ذَٰلِكَ هُوَ الْخُسْرَانُ الْمُبِينُ ﴿الحج: ١١﴾ ‫.‬

عندما يعاني الشخص في صمت ويعلم في داخله أن جبر آلامه ليس في مقدور بشر، فيتردد في الشكوى لأهله وأصحابه فيقلقوا وليس بيدهم شئ. ولكن لا يستحيل على الله شئ، والله سبحانه وتعالي قال في سورة البقرة : وَإِذَا سَأَلَكَ عِبَادِي عَنِّي فَإِنِّي قَرِيبٌ أُجِيبُ دَعْوَةَ الدَّاعِ إِذَا دَعَانِ فَلْيَسْتَجِيبُوا لِي وَلْيُؤْمِنُوا بِي لَعَلَّهُمْ يَرْشُدُونَ ﴿البقرة: ١٨٦﴾ . فيعلم الفقير إلى الله حاجته إليه، وعجز سائر البشر عنه، فيدير وجهه لله باكياً موقناً أن الأمر لله جميعاً يفعل ما يشاء، ويرزق من يشاء بغير حساب. فإن من الرزق المنع، فكما قال الله تعالي في سورة الزمر : فَإِذَا مَسَّ الْإِنسَانَ ضُرٌّ دَعَانَا ثُمَّ إِذَا خَوَّلْنَاهُ نِعْمَةً مِّنَّا قَالَ إِنَّمَا أُوتِيتُهُ عَلَىٰ عِلْمٍ بَلْ هِيَ فِتْنَةٌ وَلَـٰكِنَّ أَكْثَرَهُمْ لَا يَعْلَمُونَ ﴿الزمر: ٤٩﴾ . والله يبتلي عباده بالرزق الوفير وبالمنع ايضا، ففي سورة الفجر : فَأَمَّا الْإِنسَانُ إِذَا مَا ابْتَلَاهُ رَبُّهُ فَأَكْرَمَهُ وَنَعَّمَهُ فَيَقُولُ رَبِّي أَكْرَمَنِ ﴿١٥﴾ وَأَمَّا إِذَا مَا ابْتَلَاهُ فَقَدَرَ عَلَيْهِ رِزْقَهُ فَيَقُولُ رَبِّي أَهَانَنِ ﴿١٦﴾ . فيبلتى ذو الرزق على شكره ويبتلى ذو المنع على صبره، وكلاهما ابتلاء.

وليس المنع والعطاء في المال فقط، فهناك الصحة، والبنين، والخوف، والوحدة، وغيرهم، قال تعالى في سورة البقرة : وَلَنَبْلُوَنَّكُم بِشَيْءٍ مِّنَ الْخَوْفِ وَالْجُوعِ وَنَقْصٍ مِّنَ الْأَمْوَالِ وَالْأَنفُسِ وَالثَّمَرَاتِ وَبَشِّرِ الصَّابِرِينَ ﴿البقرة: ١٥٥﴾ . قد يشعر الأنسان أن ابتلاءه أشد من غيره، وهذا في حد ذاته فتنة إساءة الظن بالله، فكلٌ يُبتلى على قدر إيمانه ولا يظلم ربُك أحدا، وإن هذا الظن لَهُو جحود وكِبْر. أنما الحياة الدنيا دار إبتلاء، كلنا في قاعة امتحان كبيرة، أسمها الأرض، وكلنا له أمتحانه، مفصُّلٌ على مقاسه، ويحاسب كل فرد على عمله، بمعزلٍ عن غيره وما فعلوا، ففي سورة مَرْيم : وَكُلُّهُمْ آتِيهِ يَوْمَ الْقِيَامَةِ فَرْدًا ﴿مريم: ٩٥﴾ . فأنظر ظروفك إن كان مجتمعك في ظروف أصعب، أو في ظروف أحسن، ورَ ما تفعل، فإن لم يكن نفس الفعل فأنت على خطأ. فذو العين الواحدة في مجتمع العميان لهو في نعمة، وهو ذاته في مجتمع أصحاب العينين، في بلوة. وليست الأمور دائما بهذه البساطة ولن يعينك على فهم ابتلاءك بصورة صحيحة إلا حسن الظن بالله. فإن أحسنت الظن نجوت وإن كان غير ذلك هلكت.

وللحديث بقية إن شاء الله...

صلاتنا حياتنا، ماذا نتعلم من صلاة الجماعة

2011-06-10T18:50:00.004+02:00

في المسجد، عندما تصلي الجماعة، نتعلم أن ندخل في الصلاة ولا يهم كثيراً من هو الإمام. إن جاء وقت الأختيار نقدم أحفظنا واحسنّا قراءة للقرآن، لأنه سيصلي بنا بحفظه وقراءته للقرآن. نتعلم أن نخشع في صلاتنا ونصليها على أكمل وجه سواء كان الأمام صوته جميل أم لا، سواء أطال أو أنجز، وسواء سها أم لم يسهْ.
نتعلم ان نحترم من حولنا وأن لا نأتي الصلاة ورائحتنا غير لطيفة، ونتخذ زينتنا ونتطيب، نراعي من حولنا، بل ونتعاون معهم على اقامة الصفوف وترتيبها.
نتعلم تقدير الكبير والصغير، كلنا سواء امام الله.
تعلمنا الكثير من صلاتنا، فهل طبقناها في حياتنا العلمية ؟ هل طبق طالب الأمارة تقديم من هو افضل منه ؟ هل طبق الأناني مبدأ التعاون مع بقية الزملاء لنصل كلنا للهدف المشترك ؟ نجد من يقول هذه غلطة الحكومة لا تعطينا مرتبات كافية فلا نعمل الا بمقدار ما نأخذ، الا يخشعون في صلاتهم الا لو كان امامهم الشيخ مشاري راشد ؟؟
سبحان الله، نصلي ونطبق كل تلك المبادئ 5 مرات يوميا، كل يوم، ومع ذلك لم نتعلم منها ولا نطبقها، فأي صلاة تلك اللتي نصليها...

اربع سنين طالب جامعي، اتعلمت فيهم ايه ؟

2011-06-01T11:32:00.000+02:00

المادة الواحدة في الترم عبارة عن 12 محاضرة كل محاضرة 3 ساعات وسكاشن على جمب. بس انسى السكاشن شوية كدة وفكر معايا، تخيل انك حتاخد ال12 محاضرة بدل مرة في الاسبوع، لأ مرة في اليوم… لو قلنا الاسبوع 6 ايام يبقى كدة حتخلص المادة في اسبوعين، صح ؟

كلام جميل. قول بقى انك حتاخد 3 مواد، يعني 3 محاضرات كل يوم، 6 ايام في الأسبوع. كدة في اسبوعين تبقى خلصت 3 مواد. طيب المفروض عشان تتخرج من الكلية تاخد حوالي ما بين 5 او 6 مواد كل ترم، خليهم 5، يعني حوالي 40 مادة. كدة يبقى حتخلصهم في اد ايه ؟ 3 مواد كل اسبوعين، يعني 6 مواد في الشهر، 40 على 6 فيها ال … ثانية اجيب الالة الحاسبة؛ اصلي مش حافظ جدول الضرب … الظاهر 6 شهور وشوية، قول 7 شهور. ده من غير راحة خالص وتنزل 6 ايام في الاسبوع كل يوم 9 ساعات محاضرات غير المواصلات…

تخيل بقى انك عاوز تدرس كل مواد الرياضيات بتاعة قسم رياضة في كلية علوم وكمان كل مواد الفيزياء اللي في كلية علوم. معرفش بصراحة هم كام كورس بس الأكيد ان في مواد كتيرة مشتركة بينهم وبين بعض وبين علوم الحاسب. المهم لو انت قررت تدرس كل المقررات ديه، ممكن الموضوع يندمج والحاجات المشتركة تتلاشى وتقضيها كلها في اقل من 21 شهر؛ قول مثلا 16 شهر بس.

برضه مكملناش 4 سنين. طب فاضل ايه، قول انك حتاخد كل مواد تمهيدي ماجستير في علوم الحاسب والرياضيات والفيزياء، تمهيدي الماجستير سنة، يعني المجموع حوالي 30 مادة لو مفيش مكرر، يبقى كدة حوالي 5 شهور. كدة المجموع كلة 21 شهر.

طب وبعدين ؟ 21 شهر يعني حتى مكملناش سنتين… ده حتى اللي بيتجند ظابط بيقضي وقت اكتر من كدة (وبرضه شغال 6 ايام في الاسبوع!)…

اقولك في السنتين اللي بعدهم قضيها في رسالة ماجستير بس تكون تقيلة، منت دارس 3 تخصصات تقال اهو…

وكدة بقوا 4 سنين،،،

بس اربع سنين عن اربع سنين تفرق، مبروك عليك الشهادة يا خريج يا جديد ….

High quality books for each student in university; costs ?

2011-06-01T06:15:00.006+02:00

Take for instance a book such as "The Symmetries of Things". Such a book with lots of figures, colors, and heavy, shiny paper, is intriguing for students. A student would hold it in his hands, feel its weight, perceive the color figures, and most importantly, feel the value of the book. This might be one possible incentive for him to spend more time with the book, not just catching up with lectures but also discovering what's there in later, more advanced chapters.

I was wondering why didn't we have such books in university (a state university in Egypt). As a matter of fact we did, but only cheap photocopies of them, with cheap paper. This was due to the high prices of books an average student would not be able to afford. Some initiatives was there (By Dr.Waleed Yousef, as far as I can recall) to encourage students to buy a book and sell it later for half price for the next class, effectively paying only half price. I've also heard from a friend (I think it was Khaled Essawy), that in Kuwaiti schools (not universities), students get a high quality book at the beginning of the year and return it after the year ends, in perfect condition, for the next class. If it was not in perfect condition the student may be required to pay.

Another solution is to activate the role of university's library (which I've only seen once during my 4 years of undergrad!). A student may go there with some study mates (3 to 4) and study together from the same book. The library isn't just a collection of books and scholarly articles but also a meeting room and a place for concentration, that's what I've discovered after travelling and seeing other universities*. It also encourages team work and group study where people can find all the resources they need around them.

However this wasn't what I had in mind when I started this post. I actually was thinking how much would it cost us to buy each student in university the books he needed, in high quality. Let's assume that a high quality printing of a book with colors and heavy paper is 400 LE. In my undergraduate faculty we have 1200 students (300 students for 4 classes). Assuming each student needs 10 books per academic year, then that's 1200*400*10 = 4.8 million.

That's indeed a large number so we may need some optimization a la Kuwaiti model. Say that we bought those books once and then students pass them to the next class. Say that 10% of those books are in unacceptable condition (torn, having writings IN them, or lost), so after paying the initial 4.8 million once, we only need to pay 480,000 LE per year to buy a replacement. However a student who has his book in an unacceptable state must pay the full price (to discourage stealing and encourage him to take care of his books). But assume 10% of them fail to pay (for one reason or another), so we will only need to pay 48,000 per year.

On the other hand a student who buys a photocopied book may pay up to 50 LE per book. So he may be willing to pay 40 LE for a high quality printing (although a used book). This multiplied by each student, each year, actually sums up to 48,000 LE, which exactly covers the costs of lost books ! So here we go, we only need 4.8 million to start, and we need nothing more to sustain it :) (except if we suddenly change all our text books, which is far from happening).

* Not to mention the RFID gate to prevent people from stealing books while not intimidating them away. Nor the barcode-based fully automated borrowing system...

** The article was lost after completing, so I wrote it again. The original one was better.

3D without glasses for more than one viewer, with eye tracker

2011-05-11T20:36:00.003+02:00

I think the title and the image says it all. However I'll have spill some details out for myself because I might forget what I was thinking. The thing is, having multiple viewers, is just a matter of solving a system of equations. Such that every viewer's eye will see certain pixels. With eye tracking we can control the blinds accordingly, up to a fixed number of viewers. The engineering factor of how to implement those blinds may be regarded as layering several blinds, those same ones used for one viewer 3D glassless stereoscopy.

Generalization of quantum computing ?

2011-05-01T23:13:00.002+02:00

This is not particularly related to quantum computing itself but rather to the notion of extending the manipulating a single value to manipulating a linear combination of such values, having the combinations denote the amplitude of measurement of a single value. One extension approach would be to consider non-linear combinations, but that's not what I mean here. I am asking what if this was generalized somehow to the linear combinations of such linear combinations ? What is the possible operations we could do in a manner similar to that of quantum computing and what useful outcomes would that mean to us ? Quantum computing allowed things not thought to be possible like sub-linear search complexity (Grover's algorithm) and others like Shor's algorithm. What would further generalizations like the proposed one allow us to do that we didn't think was possible with quantum computing ? Another research direction I may want to pursue after PhD en shaa Allah =)

Algebra view point on computation ??

2011-05-01T06:07:00.003+02:00

Today I was trying to make a theoretical model for my peer to peer network simulator. Basically its a network of peers which is modified each loop according to certain rules (either random peer sampling or according to similarity-based clustering). The network is modeled as an adjacency matrix and to modify this matrix I may multiply it by a certain matrix; since the network is closed then it is possible to utilize a permutation matrix for that (peers exchange neighbors with each others). I also use a randomization matrix between each two operations to account for randomness in choice. So if we denote the network (adjacency matrix of the network graph) at cycle $n$ as $G(n)$, then the operation that happens in each cycle of the simulation is $$G(n+1) \leftarrow E \times R \times G(n) .$$ Where $R$ is the random permutation matrix and $E$ is the exchange matrix.

Okay, here comes an observation. Matrix multiplication is not commutative, and hence it allows us to express a sequence of operations (operators) and to express an adaptive computation. So it was fair enough to ask my self a question, non-commutativity actually added more power in this case, unlike the view common in algebras where it gets less interesting as you lose properties. So I though, what if I use Cayley-Dickson construction to make a higher algebra that is not even associative ? What would we get ? Well, I am not if this will be clear to you but I can clearly see that this allows us easily to express a tree, not just a sequence, of operations. The nature of operations might be different than a permutation or rotation, I am not sure of that, but the open question now is since a tree resembles recursion (in some sense), then could this allow us to construct a sort of universal recursive function (which would be turing-complete) ? Even more interestingly, can we construct a certain algebra in such a way to express all and only all such computations that can recognize a certain language, i.e. given a class of languages or a turing machine that recognizes them, can we construct an algebra equivalent to this machine ?

Why would this be interesting ? well, one reason that might occur to me is that if we were able to explicitly construct an algebra for $P$ and another for $NP$ then we might have another way to attack the famous $P=NP$ problem, which would then be equivalent to whether the two algebras are equivalent. This might be an interesting research direction for me, and in fact, I wrote this article as a sort of a TODO to remind me of this idea later when I finish my PhD and be able to pursue a research direction of my own. Thanks for reading and any comments or references are welcome!

The shortest sequence of bits that deterministically reveal the full state of a pseudo-random number generator

2011-04-10T23:15:00.003+02:00

A pseudo-random number generator (PRNG) is a deterministic object, with a finite internal state, usually initialized by some short seed. The seed may be truly random. However since the PRNG has a finite state, then it will eventually start repeating the entire sequence again. A computationally limited adversary may not be able to compute the entire sequence for a given seed. However it interests me to consider the case of an all-powerful probabilistic adversary (call that adversary Eve) that is able to compute the all the possible sequences for all the possible seeds (since seeds are finite as well).

Eve has a black-box access to a PRNG, and is able to initialize it with any seed and recover the whole sequence. It doesn't know a priori the length of the sequence but lets arguably assume the existence of a method to deterministically know the sequence length given only the black-box access to the PRNG.

Then consider this following game between Alice and Eve. Alice, a computationally limited Turing machine, also has a black-box access to the same PRNG as Eve, and also has a truly random short seed (S) as input. Alice initializes the PRNG with S and then generates a sequence of bits from the PRNG, of length $\ell$. Alice then chooses any sub-sequence of length $\ell^{\prime}$ and sends it to Eve. Eve should then, using her knowledge of the PRNG, and some random coin tosses, output $S^{\prime}$, her guess of the random input of Alice. There is some probability of getting it right, over the random input of Alice, the coin tosses of Eve, given a certain PRNG and a certain $\ell^{\prime}$. Call that probability $P(S^{\prime} = S)$.

The question is then, given a certain PRNG, what is the least $\ell^{\prime}$ such that $P(S^{\prime} = S)=1$.

I don't know if this has been researched before but I am just recording the question here for me to investigate later. If you have any references if this problem has been tackled before, please share it in the comments :) Thanks.

The class scheduling problem at FCIH and Graph Theory !

2011-04-07T00:21:00.008+02:00

The graph scheduling problem in FCIH apparently is not easy to solve. There is many classes, many subjects, student-subject relationship is complicated as it is fine-grained after the credit hours system has been deployed. This result in the schedule being unstable and modified a lot. In this article we seek to model this problem using Graph Theory and see possible solutions, or at least know the exact reason for the problem and the absolute minimum number of resources (time slots, rooms, etc.) needed.

Lets say that our undirected graph consists of vertices representing subjects, and edges representing student-subject relationship. In particular an edge $(i,j)$ is present between subjects $i$ and $j$ is there is a student taking both subjects.

We are going now to assign each vertex a "label" or a "color" representing its time slot (e.g. color$(i)=$ "4th time slot in Monday". We put a restriction that two neighboring vertices (i.e. having an edge between them: a student is taking them both) cannot have the same color; because the student taking both can not attend more than one subject in a time slot. This is the graph vertex coloring problem: given a graph, color its vertices such that no neighboring vertices have the same color. The trivial solution is to give each vertex a unique color. But this is not an interesting solution because you have limited number of color (time slots) and many subject; usually more than the number of time slots.

We might be interested in minimizing the number of colors used. The minimum number of colors needed to color a graph is called the graph's chromatic number, and computing that number is an NP-complete problem, and so there is no efficient algorithm to solve it exactly in the worst case unless P=NP. We may be interested though in a way to approximate it, there is an algorithm to approximate the chromatic number within a multiplicative factor. Notice that knowing the minimum number of colors doesn't mean we found such a coloring.

Does the universe split each time a qubit is measured ?

2011-03-29T09:40:00.007+02:00

In the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics it is thought that when a quantum wave function collapses to give one of the possible quantum outcomes, the universe splits into several universes. In each of those universes a different possible outcome is realized. For instance, assuming that a qubit is measured, its wave function collapses to give either up or down (1 or 0). In the Many Worlds Interpretation, the universe is split into two universes where in the first universe they observe 1 and in the second they observe 0. Check the wikipedia photo:

But, apart from that interpretation, each observation has a certain probability defined by Born's rule. That is, if we repeated the measurement (after re-initializing the quantum system to the same state) a very big number of times, then the fraction of times we observe a certain outcome is roughly equal to its probability.

So, if universe is split each time a qubit is measured into two universes, one where 1 is measured and another where 0 is measured, then how do we interpret probability of measurment ? It might be plausible to assume that the probability should hold relatively to each universe. For instance, for each of this universes, it should observe a probability consistent with the probability given by Born's rule. But since all paths are followed (correct me if I am wrong), then there exists exactly one universe (path) of all these branches (in the multiverse tree) where the measurement always took the same value. This was the obvious case for counter-example. It could also be noted that there would be a lot more universes where the probability isn't necessarily consistent the one given by Born's rule (the exact number -in the case of having two possible outcomes, could be given by $n! - \binom{n}{np}$ where $n$ is the number of measurements and $p$ is the probability of measuring one of the outcomes).

Another thing, if we assume that we could have an countably infinite number of measurements, then according the Many Worlds Interpretation, we will end up with an uncountable infinite number of universes.

الديموقراطية

2011-03-13T20:25:00.004+02:00

لكل واحد فاهم الديموقراطية غلط، الديموقراطية يعني ان رأيي ممكن يكون غير رأيك، ولا تعني ان رأيك هو الصحيح

الديموقراطية تعني حرية الإعتقاد وتعني بالضرورة ان نتقبل فئات أخرى مثل الإشتراكيين والشيوعيين والإخوان والسلفيين والعلمانيين وغيرهم

الديموقراطية تعني ان لا نحجر على فكر ولا نحجر على رأي ولكن ان نناقش ونقدم الأدلة العقلية وغيرها ونترك القرار لصاحبه

الديموقراطية تعني ان رأيي خطأ يحتمل الصواب ورأي غيري صواب يحتمل الخطأ

الديموقراطية تعني ان اتقبل رأي الأغلبية حتى لو اختلف عن رأيي، طالما اوصلت لهم أدلتي ومنطقي قبل التصويت

الديموقراطية هي ان الاختلاف هو الأصل، ان لا استنكر ان رأيك غير رأيي، ان اتقبل منطقك مهما بدا لي غبيا متخلفا ، ثم اناقشك فيه

الديموقراطية، ايضا، هي ان يكون عقلي متفتحاً لآراء اخرى، وان يمكنني تغيير رأيي اذا اقتنعت، بكل سهولة وسلاسة وبدون تمسك وكبرياء

الديموقراطية لا تعني ان نختار ما يخالف شرع الله، بل تعني تطبيق "أنتم أدرى بشئون دنياكم"

الديموقراطية لا تعني ان نحلل ما حرم الله

الديموقراطية لا تعني استبدال شرع الله بل التشاور على ما خيرنا فيه شرع الله

Vacuously true

2011-02-22T15:43:00.008+02:00

A sentence like $$ \forall a \in A : P(a) $$ is said to be Vacuously true if $A$ is the empty set, no matter what the predicate $P$ was. For example the sentence $$ \forall x \in \mathbb{R}$$ such that $$x^2 < 0 : x = 23 $$ is true (vacuously).

This could be tricky in some cases. An example I found in the exercises of the book Topology 2nd Ed. by Munkres (which is an awesome book btw), showed this sentence and asked if is true or not, if the two sets $A,B$ are guaranteed to be non-empty or not: $$ (A \times B) \subseteq ( C\times D) \implies A \subseteq C \mbox{ and } B \subseteq D $$.

After some time brushing the rust off my brain, this statement turned out to be true (as the intuition would expect) only if $A$ and $B$ are non-empty. Quiet a surprising result. A counter example case occurs when $A$ is empty but $B$ isn't, in which case $ A\times B$ is empty, in which case the statement holds vacuously although $B$ might not be a subset of $D$.

voting system

2011-02-16T01:04:00.001+02:00

For each registered voter
1- print 2D barcode for the value of an cryptographically authenticated, semantically-secure-encrypted ID of each of the nominees, along with a signature to allow the voter to check if his vote was counted.
2- send to each voting room exactly the number of registered voters to vote in it
3- when a voter votes his video is recorded with a newspaper of the day so that he can't claim later he didn't vote. he is required to leave the encrypted IDs for the nominees he didn't vote for as a proof against him that he didn't vote for anyone other than the one who he did vote for him (while not-revealing to anyone but the central computer)
4- counts is checked for each room
5- after collecting the votes, an automated scanner scans the numbers and sends them to a secured server to check the authentication of each printed encrypted ID and then using homomorphic properties to tally the votes
6- the tally is once decrypted (so only the counts is revealed and privacy of each voter is preserved), the list of signatures of votes counted is kept so that each use can guarantee his vote was counted (zero-knowledge proofs might get involved her as well)

conclusion:
to the end use this is mostly as basic as cutting a piece of paper
only one central computer needed
privacy, authenticity, counting, checking, proofs, is guaranteed

كلمة حق

2011-01-05T04:29:00.007+02:00

اخوتي المصريين
احييكم بتحية الإسلام: السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته
اشهد انه لا اله الا الله وحده لا شريك له
وان محمدا عبده ورسوله
منذ خمسة ايام وقعت احداث مؤسفة في الأسكندرية، وهو حادث تفجير نتج عنه مقتل واصابة الكثير من ابناء وطننا، مسلمين ومسيحيين على السواء
ولقد كان نتاج هذه الاحداث عدة توابع على فئات مختلفة من الشعب، ومعظم هذه التوابع خطيرة ومؤسفة ايضا
ربما القارئ يعلم بعض التوابع لكني غالبا سوف اذكر اشياء لم يفكر فيها، لذلك اطلب صبرك معي
سأبدا اولا بتلخيص المعلوم من التوابع

اولها، غضب الأقباط، ولذلك الغضب عدة ابعاد
1- غضب ضد الحكومة
2- غضب ضد المسلمين
ليس كل الفئات ينطبق عليها كل الابعاد، فأنا اجمع كل الأبعاد اللي رأيتها على فئات مختلفة
وانعكس غضب الاقباط على تواصلهم بالخارج لطلب العدالة من قوى خارجية حتى وجدنا ايطاليا تهدد مصر بقطع المعونة الاوربية عن مصر في حالة عدم توفير الحماية الكافية للأقباط
وبعض صحف فرنسا (قرأتها بنفسي) تتحدث عن حالة الحقد والكره اللتي يشعر بها الأقباط في مصر من المسلمين ويصوروننا على اننا "أمنا الغولة" واننا نكره الأقباط
نقطتي هنا هي : صورة المسلمين في عيون الاقباط والدول الأروبية وامريكا هي صورة الظالمين وصورة اوروبا وامريكا في عيون العالم هي العدل والدفاع عن المظلومين "غصب عن عين المسلمين ولاد ال..."

ثانيا، رد فعل الفئات المختلفة من المسلمين
1- بعضهم وضح رأي الإسلام في الموضوع
2- بعضهم ايد موضوع الدولة المدنية
3- البعض الآخر اكد على حبه للمسيحيين زيهم زي المسلمين وانه مستعد يعمل لهم اي حاجة
4- بعضهم وضع صورة الهلال مع الصليب والبعض الآخر رفض وضعها وآخرون قالوا انها تكفرك اذا وضعتها، والشتائم المتبادلة بين هذه الاطراف

هذه فقط بعض ردود الأفعال وليس كلها
ولكن المشترك بينها ان المسلمين في غالبيتهم يشعرون انهم متهمون ويجب عليهم التوضيح (لمن يعلم منهم) او الاعتذار والإنكار (لمن يجهل منهم)
ورأيت تعليقا من مسلم مرة يقول ان في "اوروبا والدول المتقدمة" لو سألوك على دينك فهذا هو قمة التخلف

-------------

حسنا حتى الآن ذكرت بعض ردود الأفعال، ولكن اكتب الآن تعليقي عليها
وكلامي موجه للمسلمين، وللأقباط الحرية في قراءته ايضا ان ارادوا لأننا لا نخفي شيئا

من الغباء اننا كمسلمين ننتظر رضاء غيرنا عنا
وَلَن تَرْضَىٰ عَنكَ الْيَهُودُ وَلَا النَّصَارَىٰ حَتَّىٰ تَتَّبِعَ مِلَّتَهُمْ قُلْ إِنَّ هُدَى اللَّـهِ هُوَ الْهُدَىٰ وَلَئِنِ اتَّبَعْتَ أَهْوَاءَهُم بَعْدَ الَّذِي جَاءَكَ مِنَ الْعِلْمِ مَا لَكَ مِنَ اللَّـهِ مِن وَلِيٍّ وَلَا نَصِيرٍ ﴿البقرة: ١٢٠﴾

ده اولا
ثانيا
من الجهل ان احنا نخجل من ديننا او نقبل ان احنا نكون موضع اتهام

ثالثا
اتخاذ اوروبا على انها مرجعية العدل والشرف واحنا على اساس انها اس الجهل والتطرف والغباء
هو جهل في حد ذاته
اوروبا مش هي الملاك
هناك منظمة اسمها "اوقفوا اسلمة اوروبا"
تحض على كراهية ومعاداة الإسلام والمسلمين
هذا مجرد مثال واحد ولن اذكر اخرين لأن ليس المجال له
اما بالنسبة لنا فاريد ان اعرف من أي دولة تعايش فيها عدة اديان مختلفة سويا في سلام، في تاريخ العالم كله، قبل الإسلام

رابعا
انقسام المسلمين لن يفيد احدا، سواء وضعت الهلال مع الصليب او ترفضه، فتذكر ان اشغال المسلمين في معارك جانبة في ظل الظروف الراهنة هو عين الغباء
انت حر فيما تفعل لكن لا تبدأ معارك تشغل بها الناس او تنفرهم الآن، وتذكر ان الإسلام لم ينزل كل قواعده وتشريعاته في يوم واحد

خامسا
نحن كمسلمين، نعلم جيدا تعاليم ديننا الحنيف من السماحة والرحمة والسلام
نحن مأمورون بحماية المسيحيين في بلادنا ولا ينهانا الله عن من لم يقاتلنا عن ان نبره ونقسط اليه
لَّا يَنْهَاكُمُ اللَّـهُ عَنِ الَّذِينَ لَمْ يُقَاتِلُوكُمْ فِي الدِّينِ وَلَمْ يُخْرِجُوكُم مِّن دِيَارِكُمْ أَن تَبَرُّوهُمْ وَتُقْسِطُوا إِلَيْهِمْ إِنَّ اللَّـهَ يُحِبُّ الْمُقْسِطِينَ ﴿الممتحنة: ٨﴾

وسواء اوروبا او غيرها يشككون في ذلك، فانه لا يثنينا عنه ولا يؤثر فينا، فنحن نفعل ذلك طاعة لله وارضاء له وليس ارضاء لاوروبا او غيرهم
نحن نعدل مع المسيحيين ولهم ما لنا وعليهم ما علينا تنفيذا لديننا الإسلامي اولا واخيرا وليس تطبيقا لمبادئ الدولة المدنية او غيرها، فالإسلام سبق كل ذلك
وليس في ديننا عيب في ذلك يستوجب الإخفاء ولا التغيير وان كره الكارهون

هذا الكلام للمسلمين اللذين "يستعرون" من دينهم ويرون انه ناقص ويستوجب التغيير وتطبيق مبادئ اخرى مثل الدولة المدنية والقيم الاوروبية بدلا عنه

وهذا الكلام ايضا للأقباط اللذين يظنون ان تطبيق مبادئ الدولة المدنية هي اللتي سوف تضمن لهم العدل بدلا من تطبيق مبادئ الإسلام
واعني بذلك ان الدولة المدنية هي قانون، ومثلها مثل اي قانون لا يمكن تطبيقه الا اذا اراد الرجل ذلك، وبعض الناس ان لم يكون هناك شاهد عليهم لا يطبقون القانون
على عكس الدين، ففي الدين انت دائما مسئول امام الله في كل لحظة، وان امرك الله بالعدل والمساواه فأنت تفعلها في كل وقت ومن قلبك وعن رضا
فتطبيق عدل الإسلام في قلب المسلمين افضل من "اجبارهم" على ذلك بقانون او غيره
فلا يمكن اجبار اي احد على اي شئ

سادسا
الى المسلمين اللذين يريدون تغيير الدولة لتصبح دولة مدنية لأن الإسلام فيه عيب
الى الاقباط اللذين يظنون ان الإضطهاد بسبب الإسلام
الى اوروبا وامريكا وغيرهم ممن يظنون ان الإسلام وحش همجي يستوجب اتخاذ اجراءات لحماية الأقباط في بلاده

اقول لكم
ديننا ليس فيه اسرار
ديننا في العدل والمساواه
وسواء عرفتم ذلك ام لم تعرفوه
بعد ما قرأتم
وسواء اعترفتم به ام لا
نحن نعامل كل الناس, وحتى المخلوقات ما دون البشر، بالرحمة والعدل
ونحن نفعل ذلك لله وابتغاء مرضاته لا ابتغاء مرضاة اوروبا او غيرهم
ولن يخسر الإسلام شيئا دون اعترافكم بذلك ولن يغير عدم اعترافكم عدلنا او مساواتنا

واريد ان اقول
من يهاجم الإسلام عن غير علم، عن جهل، او بعلم وخبث
سواء كان مسلما او غيره
انت الخاسر ان لم تفتح عقلك وتفهم اين الحق من الباطل
ليس الإسلام بمعيوب ليصلح ولا بناقص ليعدل
سيستمر الإسلام برضاك او رغما عن انفك، قويا عزيزا شامخا، والأهم من ذلك، عادلا مساويا راحما

New post

2010-12-30T00:12:00.003+02:00

حاليا انا في اجازة فاضلها ٤ ايام وتخلص ومش لاقي حاجة اعملها وزهقان فقلت اكتب مقالة اقرفكوا بيها معايا - على افتراض ان انتوا حتقروا يعني ـ احسن ما اقعد اكلم في نفسي وخلاص
احيانا تتدفق الأفكار في رأسي، سواء افكار سياسية او اجتماعية او تكنولوجية
بس انا اكنت حابب اخد الاجازة ديه اروق فيها دماغي شوية عشان انا تقلت عليها حبتين الفترة اللي فاتت في الشغل عشان انسى مشاكلي وهمومي
في افكار تانية كتيرة خطرت على بالي في الاجازة، دماغي مش عاوزة تستريح، بس عموما كلها افكار مختلطة بمشاعر والخليط ده صعب يتكتب
يعني مثلا لو على افكار اصلاح البلد بتلاقي مشاعر كتيرة داخله في الموضوع بدءا من الاحباط وإنتهاءا بالتحدي
او يمكن بدءأ بفقدان الأمل والزهق والهرب وانتهاءا الي الرضا والصبر والمقاومة
في جزئين ناقحين عليا مؤخرا في موضوع اصلاح البلد ده، رغم اني بحاول اغطي كل الأجزاء بس ميمنعش اني اناقش دول دلوقتي طالما كدة كدة مش فارقة في اللحظة ديه
اول جزء هو مبدأ ان الإصلاح مش اصلاح البلد ولا اصلاح الخدمات ولا التعليم ولا الطرق، لكن هو اصلاح الناس
يعني مثلا لو انت مسكت منصب متجيش تهزأ الناس اللي تحتك لما يغلطوا وتعاقبهم وتجيب ناس تانية تعمل اللي في دماغك
الأهم من كدة انك تعلمهم وتلهمهم
تعلمهم ازاي يصحلوا وتلهمهم يصلحوا ايه وليه
واهم من كدة تفهمهم ازاي يصلحوا الناس اللي تحتهم برضه و يصلحوا المجتمع اللي حواليهم
لكن مجرد انك تعاقب واحد لو غلط اللي حيحصل انك حتجيب ناس، من الآخر، روبوت، تنفذ وخلاص ، ويوم ما انت تروح قول على الاصلاح السلام، مهو ان غاب القط، العب يا فار

تاني جزء هو ان الفرق في العلم عمال يكبر عن ما كان ممكن يحصل زمان
يعني ايه اخر الفرق في التكنولوجيا زمان ؟ سيف من الحديد بدل سيف من النحاس ؟؟
ولا منجنيق بدل النبلة ؟
الموضوع دلوقتي ملوش علاقة بالادوات ولا التصنيع للأسف
لما الواحد ييجي يشوف اللي بيحصل في مناهج الرياضة برة عن هنا يلاقي ان فعلا كأنها غرباء من كوكب آخر واحنا لسة يا دوب كوكب غلبان ملوش في حاجة خالص
الجديد عامة في الفرق ده انه عمال يكبر وصعب جدا ان احنا نقفله في فترة قليلة
يعني السلاح ممكن نهربه او نشتريه
لكن العلم حنعمل فيه ايه ؟
تخيل مثلا واحد جالك من القرن ال11 مثلا قالك عاوزك تعلمني ازاي اعمل عربية عشان احارب بيها
حتضحك عليه وتقوله دلوقتي في طيارات، حيقولك يعني ايه ؟؟
كأنك بتحاول تعلم تفاضل وتكامل لواحد ميعرفش يعني اي دوال اصلا
يعني الفرق في العلم بينا وبينها بقى عامل زي الفرق في قرون كاملة من العلم ازاي حتخلي واحد يتخطى او يتعلم قرون من الفرق بسهولة ؟
والمشكلة ان الفرق عمال بيكبر واحنا قاعدين فرحانين بكادر المعلمين ....

المقالة ديه مش هدفها الشكوى من غير اساس ولا حل
انا هدفي من المقالة اني اضيع وقتي (ووقتكوا) وانكد عليكوا شوية
اما هدفي التاني اني اشارك مش بس تفكيري لكن برضه احاسيسي
في اللي فوق ممكن تلاقي احاسيس المثابرة احيانا واحيانا اخرى تلاقي احاسيس الرعب
في الآخر ديه البلوج بتاعتي يعني عني انا مش عن حاجة تانية ولو مش عاجبك متقراش .. ايه الناس ديه

2010-12-06T05:27:00.004+02:00

I wish in real life finding happiness was as easy as finding the second derivative of a polynomial.

very strange dream: time is 2D

2010-12-02T16:11:00.002+02:00

I've had a very strange dream yesterday night. That time goes on orthogonally to our own time. That is, you can think about a problem, forever, but in the next second you find the solution. No contradiction here, you felt that "forever" has passed in a second.

It was a pretty amusing dream. It reminded me when I woke up with "Oracles" in the theoretical computer science sense (where you can ask an oracle a query and get the answer the next second). Actually the explanation for this is that the time the oracle takes is in a second time dimension, that is orthogonal to ours. It can take forever in its dimension, but we only feel our own orthogonal time dimension.

This also makes sense that given for instance L^P, means that the original time dimension is logarithmic (allowed to have only logarithmic number of steps in the size of the input) while the "orthogonal" time for the oracle "P" is polynomial in the size of the input. So having an oracle is just extending 1 dimensional time to 2 dimensional time.

Having several oracles can also generalize this idea to n-dimensional time. For instance L^P^EXP, you'd have 3D time. The order of which oracle has access to which is implied by the exponentiation, but that is only an artificial restriction because if it was a real 3D time then L would have access to EXP as well. Talk about Inception ....

Man, I love my dreams :D

2010-07-16T07:44:00.000+03:00

Blog post title

this is a blog post :)

2010-07-15T02:24:00.000+03:00

Recursive-ascent parsers

Instead of representing your LR parsing tables as tables and user a driver to trace them over an input stream, you can simply implement each state as a function and use the machine stack as the push-down stack.

It turns out that this way is called "recursive-ascent" parsers. It is faster as the parsing is done without "interpretation" of the parsing table. It might also be clearer for the user that the plain parsing tables as the parsing actions/driving are encoded in the function.

Indeed it is more tedious to write such code from scratch, unlike recursive-descent parsers. That's why it is usually better to use a parser generator for that task.

Computing Electric Field Using Mathematica

2010-06-16T02:17:00.002+03:00

Calculating the electric field caused by charged particles. Green dots are positively charged and red ones are negatively charged. I wish I knew about Mathematica on my physics class in 2003 !!- It would have been much more enjoyable...

Mathematica art

2010-05-04T12:36:00.002+03:00

الأمة والإبتلاء

2010-04-17T23:34:00.004+02:00

‎السلام عليكم
‎انا فقط سوف اسجل بعض افكاري هنا:
‎أولا:
‎إن كنا ولدنا والدنيا رائعة والحياة جميلة ولا يوجد حروب ولا سرقة ولا رشوة، في الدنيا كلها،
‎لما كانت هذه دنيا، بل كانت جنة
‎وما هذا ميعاد الجنة
‎ان الدنيا دار ابتلاء
‎الَّذِي خَلَقَ الْمَوْتَ وَالْحَيَاةَ لِيَبْلُوَكُمْ أَيُّكُمْ أَحْسَنُ عَمَلًا وَهُوَ الْعَزِيزُ الْغَفُورُ ﴿الملك: ٢﴾
‎ثانيا:
‎الناس تظهر معادنها عند الشدة، فإن كانت الدنيا رائعة كما قلنا فلما ظهر فرق بين قوي الإيمان وضعيفه.
‎فإنما يوجد البلاء ليميز الله الخبيث عن الطيب وليعلم اللذين آمنوا وليعلم المنافقين
‎سورة الأنفال:
‎لِيَمِيزَ اللَّـهُ الْخَبِيثَ مِنَ الطَّيِّبِ وَيَجْعَلَ الْخَبِيثَ بَعْضَهُ عَلَىٰ بَعْضٍ فَيَرْكُمَهُ جَمِيعًا فَيَجْعَلَهُ فِي جَهَنَّمَ ۚ أُولَـٰئِكَ هُمُ الْخَاسِرُونَ﴿٣٧﴾
‎ثالثا:
‎انما الإبتلاء بقدر الإيمان
‎فمن كان إيمانه قويا كان بلاءه اشد،
‎فإن الأمة في ابتلاء، في العديد من الدول الإسلامية
‎من الإبتلاء العسكري في فلسطين ومثلها من دول المسلمين
‎الى الإبتلاء بالدنيا في بعض الدول الأخري حيث يغتر الناس بأموالهم وينسون ما يحدث في المسلمين
‎الى الإبتلاء بنسيان الوحدة الإسلامية والنفور منها في بعض النفوس
‎فإنما جلاء هذا الإبتلاء يبقي الله فضله إلى إناس منا يريد الله لهم الخير
‎إناس هم مؤمنين، يبتغون فضل الله، فرقة هم منا ينشرون الدين الصحيح ويوحدون الأمة ويحررون الدول الإسلامية
‎فإن كان الله يريد بنا الخير كنا نحن، وإن لم نكن نحن فهناك اناس فضلهم الله علينا ليؤجروا
‎أما نحن فإن أردنا جزءا من الثواب فلنساعدهم، إن أتوا بعدنا
‎فكيف نساعدهم ؟
‎بالدعوة الي الدين الصحيح
‎بإيقاظ النائمين عن العقيدة، وظنوا الدين صلاة وصيام فقط، بل ومنهم من لا يصلي اصلا
‎إذا أتى هؤلاء القوم المقدر لهم إزالة الغمة، وجدوا أناسا صالحين،
‎أو يكونوا هؤلاء القوم ذرية من دعوناهم
‎أو يكونا هؤلاء القوم هم من هداهم الله علي أيدينا
‎أو ان نكون نحن لأننا سعينا
‎لكن....
‎لكي ندعوا يجب أن نتعلم أولا
‎إذن، هذه دعوة لكل من قرأ
‎أن تتعلم دين الإسلام
‎العقيدة والقرآن والفقه والشرع والسنة الصحيحة
‎ثم تدعوا الي الله عن فهم، باللتي هي احسن
‎تعلم أصحابك واهلك وذريتك وعشيرتك مما علمك الله
‎وتدعوهم لتعليم اصحابهم وأهلهم وذريتهم
‎عسى الله ان يصلح بك الأمة
‎فنحن امة تنتصر بتقواها لا بقوتها
‎وعسى الله أن يهدينا سواء السبيل ويتقبل منا صالح اعمالنا ويسدد خطانا ان شاء الله
‎والسلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته

Screenshot: Loading a font file using libfreetype6 and displaying using native xlib11 calls

2010-04-10T04:28:00.003+02:00

اللغة العربية في العلوم والبحث العلمي

2010-03-28T23:49:00.003+02:00

إِنِّي أُغْبِطُ هَؤُلَاءِ الْفَرِنْسِيِّينَ الْلَّذِيْنَ لَدِيْهِمُ الْفُرْصَةَ لِقِرَاءَةِ الْعُلُومِ بِلُغَتِهِمْ الْأُمُّ، وَكِتَابَةِ أَبْحَاثِهُمْ بِهَا أَيْضاً. إِنَّهُمْ يُرِيْدُوْنَ كُلَّ مَا حَوْلِهُمْ أَنْ يَكُوْنَ بِالْفَرَنْسِيَّةِ حَتَّىَ إِنَّكَ لَتَجِدُ مُصْطَلَحَاتٍ فَرِنْسِيَّةٍ مُتَرْجَمَةٍ تَكَادُ تَكُوْنُ مِنَ الْغَرَابَةِ كَمَا كَانَتْ سَتَكُوْنُ الْتَّرْجَمَةُ الْعَرَبِيَّةُ عَلَىَ آذَانِنَا. مِثْلَمَا تُوْجَدُ مَجَلَّةُ الْعِلُوْم الْكُوَيْتِيِّةُ الْمُتَرْجَمَةُ عَنْ Scientific American إِلَّا أَنَّ قِرَاءَتِهَا تُعَدُّ مِنَ الصُّعُوْبَةِ الْكَافِيَةِ أَلَّا تُفْهَمُ غَالِبِيَّةٌ الْمَقَالِ لِعَدَمِ إِعْتِيَادِنا لِتِلْكَ الْمُصْطَلَحَاتِ الْعَرَبِيَّة. وَعَلَىَ الْرَّغْمِ مِنْ أَنَّ الْتَّرْجَمَةَ الْمَذْكُورَةُ هِيَ عَرَبِيَّةٌ صَحِيْحَةٌ تَمَامَاً وَّدَقِيْقَة الْمَعْنَىْ، إِلَا أَنَّهُ لَهَجرِْنا الْلُّغَةَ الْعَرَبِيَّةَ لَمْ نَعُدْ نَمْلِكُ الْقُدْرَةَ عَلَىَ تَحْلِيْلِ الْمُصْطَلَحَاتِ وَفَهِمِ مَعْنَاهَا. أُرِيْدُ أَوَّلًَ أَنَّ أُعَرِّفَ مَعْنَى كَلِمَة «مُصْطَلَحٌ» أَوْ «أِصْطِلاح» (بِمَفْهومَيّ الْشَّخْصِيُّ) (تَحْذِيْر: هَذِهِ الْمَعْلُوْمَات قَدْ تَكُوْن غَيْرَ دَقِيْقَة) «اصْطُلِحَ» كَلِمَةٌ أَصْلُهَا «ص ل ح»، أَيّ تصِالَحَ وأَتَّفَقَ. نَقُوُلُ اصْطَلَحَ الْنَاسُ عَلَىَ كَذَا أَيْ أَتَّفَقُوُاْ عَلَيْهِ. فَنَقُوْلُ اصْطَلَحَ الْنَاسُ عَلَىَ جُمْلَةٍ أَوْ كَلِمَةٍ أَنَّ لَهَا مَعْنَىً مُحَدَّد، فَهِيَ مُصْطَلَحٌ. فَرُبَّمَا تَكُوْنُ الْكَلِمَة لَيْسَ لَهَا مَعْنَىً أَوْ مَعْنَاهَا الْحَرْفِيّ مُخْتَلِفٌ جُزْئِيَّاً أَوْ كَلَياً، وَلَكِنْ اصْطَلَحَ الْنَّاسُ أَنَّ مَعْنَاهَا الْدِّلَالِيُّ هُوَ شَئٌ آَخَر. وَهَذَا مُنْتَشِرٌ فِيْ الْأَبْحَاثِ الْإِنْجِلِيْزِيَّةِ. وَعَلَيْهِ فَأَنَّ الْتَّرْجَمَةَ الحِرَفِيَّةَ هِيَ بِلَا فَائِدَةٍ تُذْكَرُ. وَعَلَيْهِ فَإِمَّا أَنْ تَتْرُكَ الْكَلِمَةُ كَمَا هِيَ وَتُصْبِحُ كَلِمَةً عَرَبِيَّةً أًعْجَمِيَّةُ اَلْأَصْلُ --وَتَكُوْنُ مَمْنُوْعَةً مِنَ الْصَّرْفِ-- وَلَا يُمْكِنُ تَخْمَيْنُ مَدْلُوْلَهَا إِلَا بِالْإِشَارَةِ الْمُبَاشَرَةِ لَهُ. وَالْخِيَارُ الْآَخِرُ هُوَ أَنْ يُتَرْجَمَ مَدْلُوْلُ الْكَلِمَةِ، وَالْمُشْكِلَةُ فِيْ هَذَا الْأَخِيرِ أَنَّنَا عَلَىَ عِلَاقَةٍ ضَعِيْفَةٍ بِلُغَتِنَا الْعَرَبِيَّة حَتَّىَ أَنَّنَا لَا نَسْتَطِيْعُ رَبَطَ مُحْتَوَىْ الْكَلِمَاتِ الْبَلِيغَةِ الْلَّتِيْ أُخْتِيْرَتْ، بِالْمَدْلُوْلِ الْسَّابِقِ وَجُوْدَهُ فِيْ عُقُوْلِنَا. وَهَذَا لِأَنَّنَا لَمْ نَفْهَمْ لُغَتَنَا وَكَلِمَاتِهَا الْمُنْتَشِرَة إِلَّا بِصِفَةٍ إِصْطِلاحِيّةٍ. فَمَثَلَا، كَلِمَةُ «بُؤْرَة»، كُلُّنَا يَعْرِفُهَا، وَلَكِنْ إِنْ صُرِّفَت هَذِهِ الْكَلِمَةِ تَصْرِيْفِاً عَرَبِيّاً سَلِيْمَاً كَفِعْلٍ، إِلَىَ «تَبْئِيرٌ» (focusing) تَجِدُ أَكْثَرَنَا فَاغِرِي الْأَفْوَاه. بِالْمِثْل، «رَهَفَ»، «سَمْعَهُ مُرْهَفٌ»، «تَرَهِيفٌ»، مِثْلَمَا فِيْ «Tuning». الْلُّغَةُ الْعَرَبِيَّةُ لُغَةٌ غَنِيَّةُ جِدّاً وَيُمْكِنُ تَكْوِيْنَ كَلِمَاتٍ مُعَبِرَةٍ عَنْ مُعْظَمِ الْمَدْلُوْلَاتِ الْعِلْمِيَّةِ تَكْوِيْنَاً مُبَاشِرَاً مِنْ قَوَاعِدِ تَصْرِيْفِ الْلُّغَةِ. وَلَكِنَّنَا لَسْنَا عَلَىَ الْقَدْرِ الْكَافِيْ مَنْ اَلِإلْمَامِ بِهَا. عَلَىَ الْعَكْسِ مِنْ ذَلِكَ، تَجِدُ الْفِرَنْسِيَّ لَيْسَ فَقَطْ يَسْتَعْمِلُ مُعْظَمَ الْمُصْطَلَحَاتِ بِالْفَرَنْسِيَّةِ، وَلَكِنَّهُ -وَيَا لَلِغَرَابَة- يُفَكِّرُ بِالْفَرَنْسِيَّةِ أيْضاً! قَدْ تَبْدُوَ هَذِهِ كَلِمَةٌ غَرِيْبَةٌ لِلْبَعْضِ، وَلَكِنَّ مُعْظَمُنَا بِدُوْنِ قَصْدٍ يُفَكِّرُ بِاسْتِخْدَامِ الْمُصْطَلَحَاتِ الْأعْجَمِيَّةِ لِأَنَّهُ لَا يَجِدُ غَيْرَهَا، خَاصَّةً مَنْ مِنَّا فِيْ مَجَالٍ عِلْمِيّ. وَرُبَّمَا كَانَ الْسَّبَبُ فِيْ تُمَكُّنِهِمْ مِنَ تَصْرِيْفِ لُغَتِهِمْ الْفَرَنْسِيَّةِ بِهَذَا الشَّكْلِ، انَّهُمْ قَدْ تَعَرَّضُوْا لمُصْطَلِحَاتٍ عِلْمِيَّةٍ كَثِيْرَةٍ حَتَّىَ بَاتَ مِنَ الْطَّبِيْعِيِّ لَهُمْ أَنْ يَفْهَمُوْا كَيْفِيَّةِ تَصْرِيْفِ الْمَزِيْدِ مِنْهُمْ.

انت المسئول مش مبارك

2010-03-21T18:08:00.002+02:00

سؤال
لو مصر فيها 80 مليون
ومنهم
79,999,999
مواطن
ماشيين صح
كان مبارك عرف يفسد البلد ؟
طب سؤال
مبارك جالك شخصياً في يوم بنفسه وقالك ارتشي ؟
قالك سوق وحش ؟
قالك اهمل في شغلك ؟
قالك اسرق البلد ؟
في اكتر من مليون موظف في مصر
مبارك لو قضى ال 30 سنة اللي فاتوا يلف عليهم مش حليحق يلف عليهم واحد واحد
يعني مقالش لكل واحد فيهم يبقى كده
مبارك مش هو اللي افسد مصر احنا اللي افسدناها
لكن احنا بنتجمل ونلقي اللوم على مبارك
مبارك قالك غش في الامتحان ولا قالك انقل الواجب من زميلك ولا قالك متحضرش محاضراتك ولا قالك متذاكرش موادك ولا قالك تنفض للسكاشن ؟
مبارك قالك متهتمش بالطلبة ومطالبهم ولا قالك اقلبهم ؟
مبارك قالك اسرق القمح والدقيق ولا خزن السولار ولا متنزلش انابيب البوتاجاز ؟
مبارك لوحده مش كفاية
ولو قلنا ان فيه
100,000
مسئول متواطئين وبيحالوا يفسدوا البلد
في 79 مليون مش حيستجيبوا وحيفضلوا يقوموا بعملهم على اكمل وجه
مبارك راح للمدرس قاله ادي دروس ولا راح للدكتور قاله اطبع ملزمة ولا اسرق كلية المواطنين ؟
لأ
الشعب هو اللي فاسد وهو اللي جاب كده لنفسه
طول محنا بنقول مبارك هو المشكلة والبرادعي هو الحل مش حنفوق
دي مجرد مسكنات نمحي بيها الحقيقة اللي مش عاوزين نعترف بيها
ان احنا.. السبب الحقيقي ان مصر كده
نداء لكل مصري
كلكم راع وكلكم مسئول عن رعيته
لو انت معيد ادي الأولوية لتدريسك
لو انت طالب ادرس بضمير
لو انت موظف قوم بعملك على اكمل وجه ومترتشيش
محدش يقولي صعب وناكل منين وتعيش ازاي
في ناس بتعمل كده واعرفهم شخصيا
اللي بيدخلهم في الشهر هو ده رزقهم الحلال اللي ربنا كتبهلهم
محدش حياخد غير رزقه
عاوز رزقك حلال كان بها
عاوزه حرام كده كده مش حتاخد اكتر من الرزق اللي ربنا كتبهولك بس حتتعاقب عليه يوم الحساب

There is no privacy

2010-03-20T02:02:00.000+02:00

This is the common public version of the talk I've attended by Vitaley Shmitakov. The scientific paper will be publish within a two months. it's really really important to realize the fact that any piece of information, even if not personally identifying, can reveal your identity. Even just the number of your friends on facebook can do that ! (btw, my research in masters is about privacy in social networks).

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/technology/17privacy.html

For example, University of Texas professor Viatly Shmatikov and Stanford University researcher Arvind Narayanan were able to identify more than 30 percent of users of both Twitter and Flickr, even thought the accounts had been stripped of identifying information like account names and email addresses. At Carnegie Mellon University, researchers Alessandro Acquisti and Ralph Gross reported they could accurately predict the Social Security numbers for 8.5 percent of the people born in the United States between 1989 and 2003--nearly 5 million people

We're doing it wrong

2010-03-16T15:09:00.003+02:00

Basically I am referring to the following comment on Masrawy news:

ساهم في كتابة التاريخ
الفكرة هي( كيف ننصر الأقصى )

وتعتمد الفكرة على العزيمة والإصرار وهي كالتالي

إننا نقوم بدعوة كل المسلمين في جميع وسائل الأعلام والمواقع الإلكترونية إلى موعد محدد هو الجمعة الأولى من إبريل القادم (يوم اليتيم ) وفي تمام الساعة الثانية عشر ظهراً بتوقيت مكة المكرمة ندعو كل المسلمين على وجه الأرض إلى ترديد كلمة (الله أكبر ) بأعلى صوت ولمدة دقيقة واحد وكل واحد من مكانه بمعني أنه بدون مظاهرات أو خروج للشارع أي على حسب ما يصادفك الميعاد نرجوا منك أن تطلق صيحة النصر ( الله أكبر ) وقد تم إختيار يوم اليتيم لإن الأقصى في هذه الأيام مثل اليتيم الذي لا يجد من يرعاه ونتمنى من إتحاد جامعات مصر وكل برامج التوك شو والصحف والمواقع الإلكترونيه المسلمة وكل كبير وصغير ورئيس وشعب وغني وفقير أن يستجيب لنصرة الأقصى )

تخيل أن كل المسلمين على وجه الأرض إستجابت لنصرة الأقصى والكل يردد في صوت واحد الله اكبر إعتراضاً على ما تفعل إسرائيل هل تتخيل وقت صيحت النصر لا تستصغر الأمر فربما أدت هذه الرسالة لوحدة المسلمين فتكون ممن ساهمت في بناء تاريخ جديد وإعتبر الفكرة فكرتك وتصرف فيها كيف تشاء المهم أننا نتحد في هذا الوقت

Of course people who will do that will go home happy thinking they helped Al-Aqsa and did their part. If I was an enemy I'd be very happy this happened of course. It's like giving your child a toy to destroy instead of destroying the TV.

I hope people get my message. Instead of *just* boycotting, we can also make proactive steps that is much better than just /not/ buying their products.

One such thing is to focus on being better Muslims and by that I do NOT mean going to mosque to pray nor to fast each Monday and Thursday! Islam is much wider than that. Weak Muslims, and fooled ones think that if they did that they have did what they should do and they go home happy!

Well, that's not the case at all. We can be better Muslims by treating each others well. By smiling in each others face. Or most importantly, by being productive, not just by doing better in our stupid useless daily jobs, but also by finding better jobs. That includes seeking better education. There are very successful scientists who have went through the same dull education we all have went through and they managed to teach their selves.

What I am saying is a very well known advice in the west: "Pick your battles". That is, redirect your power and potential into the right direction. The guy who goes in a demonstration in the morning and then goes to give private tutorial in the night, is such a hypocrite. He could redirect the power he spent in the demonstration to teach better at day-time classes instead. WE JUST PICK THE EASY BATTLES.

For example,

سبق درهم مائة ألف كان لرجل درهمان فتصدق أجودهما وانطلق رجل إلى عرض ماله فأخذ منها مائة ألف فتصدق بها

الراوي: أبو هريرة المحدث: ابن حزم - المصدر: المحلى -الصفحة أو الرقم: 9/139

خلاصة حكم المحدث: صحيح

This authentic Hadeeth means that, at least in my understanding, that the harder your battle, the more is your deeds. Also as in:

لَن تَنَالُوا الْبِرَّ حَتَّىٰ تُنفِقُوا مِمَّا تُحِبُّونَ وَمَا تُنفِقُوا مِن شَيْءٍ فَإِنَّ اللَّـهَ بِهِ عَلِيمٌ﴿آل عمران: ٩٢﴾

Of course it is harder to give away from what you value the most. So, I send a message to all Muslims, STOP PICKING THE EASY BATTLES AND START DOING THINGS THAT COUNT.

If you have no idea what I mean, here's a few ideas:

1- If you are a student, study your lessons harder with the intention of

وَأَعِدُّوا لَهُم مَّا اسْتَطَعْتُم مِّن قُوَّةٍ وَمِن رِّبَاطِ الْخَيْلِ تُرْهِبُونَ بِهِ عَدُوَّ اللَّـهِ وَعَدُوَّكُمْ وَآخَرِينَ مِن دُونِهِمْ لَا تَعْلَمُونَهُمُ اللَّـهُ يَعْلَمُهُمْ وَمَا تُنفِقُوا مِن شَيْءٍ فِي سَبِيلِ اللَّـهِ يُوَفَّ إِلَيْكُمْ وَأَنتُمْ لَا تُظْلَمُونَ ﴿الأنفال: ٦٠﴾

And:

المؤمن القوي خير وأحب إلى الله من المؤمن الضعيف . وفي كل خير . احرص على ما ينفعك واستعن بالله . ولا تعجز . وإن أصابك شيء فلا تقل : لو أني فعلت كان كذا وكذا . ولكن قل : قدر الله . وما شاء فعل . فإن لو تفتح عمل الشيطان

الراوي: أبو هريرة المحدث: مسلم - المصدر: صحيح مسلم -الصفحة أو الرقم: 2664
خلاصة حكم المحدث: صحيح

2- If you are an employee, deliver your service to all clients as the best it could be, and with a smile.

3- Choose your field of study of the field you will be able to contribute to the most, not the field that you think will get you most income. Your life-long income is determined beforehand and you shall not die unless you get it all.

أيها الناس اتقوا الله وأجملوا في الطلب فإن نفسا لن تموت حتى تستوفي رزقها وإن أبطأ عنها فاتقوا الله وأجملوا في الطلب خذوا ما حل ودعوا ما حرم

الراوي: جابر بن عبدالله المحدث: الألباني - المصدر: صحيح ابن ماجه - الصفحة أو الرقم: 1756
خلاصة حكم المحدث: صحيح

4- Don't cheat in your exams :

أن الوظيفة التي يحصل عليها بهذه الشهادة المزوّرة، أو التي حصل عليها بالغش سوف يكون راتبها حراماً، و أيما جسد نبت من حرام فالنار أولى به. (http://www.islamway.com/?iw_s=Article&iw_a=view&article_id=1668).

5- Don't steal time from your work. This is also cheating. If you don't give your work its right, there is a part of your salary that will be haram.

ليأتين على الناس زمان ، لا يبالي المرء بما أخذ المال ، أمن حلال أم من حرام

الراوي: أبو هريرة المحدث: البخاري - المصدر: صحيح البخاري - الصفحة أو الرقم: 2083
خلاصة حكم المحدث: [صحيح]

لا يدخل الجنة جسد غذى من حرام

الراوي: أبو بكر الصديق المحدث: الألباني - المصدر: السلسلة الصحيحة - الصفحة أو الرقم: 2609
خلاصة حكم المحدث: صحيح بشواهد

6- Do not bribe or accept bribery.

لعن الله الراشي ، و المرتشي في الحكم

الراوي: أبو هريرة المحدث: الألباني - المصدر: صحيح الجامع - الصفحة أو الرقم: 5093
خلاصة حكم المحدث: صحي

7- Do not accept bank interests (Reba).

And more importantly, LEARN MORE ABOUT ISLAM.

If you really want the well-being of the Islam and to help Al-Aqsa, don't take the easy way (مظاهرة وخلصت) and ignore the things that matter.

The power of coding

2010-03-04T02:23:00.003+02:00

The problem:
You have a bit vector $\langle a,b \rangle$, and I have another bit vector $\langle c,d \rangle$. We want to compute the scalar product of the two. Typically, we would need at least two multiplications and one addition ($\ell$ multiplications and $\ell-1$ additions for bit vectors of length $\ell$).
Using a certain algebraic property of some algebraic objects, we can do it using two additions and one multiplication ($2(\ell-1)$ additions and one multiplication).
We have reduced the number of computations. In cryptography, using homomorphic cryptsystems, multiplications is a big problem. So having reduced that to only one multiplication is big gain. Note also that you just add your vector locally and send me the result, so even less communication overhead.
I have got correctly working examples for vectors up to 6 items till now. I am working on increasing that number and getting to know the upper limit or any other limitations. So far it works for vectors over $\mathbb{R}$ not just bit vectors.

Ray tracing with Mathematica ;)

2010-02-06T01:05:00.003+02:00

Mathematica screenshot

2010-01-27T00:02:00.001+02:00

Some math..

2009-12-21T05:51:00.005+02:00

Let $R$ be a symmetric relation on set $S$ of length $n$. Let $b \in S$ and let $\beta_b = \{a | b R a \wedge a \neq b\}$. Let $k(b)=|\beta_b|$ be the cardinality of $b$.
Theorem:
$\exists a,b \in S : k(a) = k(b)$
Proof:
Assume there doesn't exist such a and b. Then all our elements in $S$ has different cardinalities. We have $n$ elements so we need $n$ different cardinalities. Maximum cardinality possible is $n-1$. So our cardinalities range from $0$ to $n-1$. If there is element $y$ whose cardinality $n-1$ then $\exists_{n-1} a : y R a$, i.e. all other elements than $y$ has cardinality $\geq 1$. Hence there is no element with cardinality $0$. And then we don't have $n$ different cardinalities, contradiction. The theorem holds $\qed$

Universal services

2009-12-06T08:57:00.003+02:00

I have moved my favorite album sharing service from facebook to picasaweb.
Picasaweb has several advantages over facebook from my point of view. The most important one is the ability to store images with original quality. Auto-tagging is also a great relief, that you can tag faces of people much much faster. Also, for shared events all people can upload to one common album, unlike facebook where each one has his own album.
However, a question does arise here, what's the fate of my old pics on facebook ? How can I for example find all the tagged photos of some person ? That's a drawback.
The problem is much more general that it initially seems. The diversity of services is a good thing, both for competition and creativity and freedom of choice. However, some services are much much useful if aggregated among all your friends. Or at least if sharing of items is possible among different service providers, like calendar providers, image sharing, item recommendation.
Some solution has to be sought. And I conjecture that solving it is impossible because some unforeseen aggregation services might require user approval for privacy issues and then it can't be seamlessly done unless are friends in your network (and their network) are actively presented by the terms of the new value-added services of all different providers. That's impossible without centralized coordination and control over all humanity. It's just impossible.
So one solution to do so is to make the move you want in your local vicinity as much as you can. But it becomes tiring when lots of new services has shown and also when users tend to have keenness on their old service because of the effort need to be done to migrate all the data to the new service or at least the psychological effect of having to leave their old data (and sometimes for leaving the old familiar interface too).
So, by definition, multiple services existing together implies that users are distributed between them in some sort of a fair share. Adding support to unify and aggregate these services together requires at least some sort of unified identification per person. Which, although of existence of openID, is not always feasible for many people because they just don't like having single identifiable identity, or in other words "privacy".
Privacy became a concern in my eyes when I noticed that I almost can get enough information about a person through his public facebook data and his linked-in account to know his looks, and his friends/community and his educational/work background.
In the same sense having centralized identity with all the information can be a big privacy breach if the credentials is lost to some malicious individual/institution. Biometrics are not enough for it is not attainable by all people and even PKI infrastructure is not good enough for lack of central authority knowledge of identifying information of each individual on the face of earth, and for the (non-zero) possibility of private key loss !
Google tried to unify lots of services in its re-innovation of email, the so-called "google wave". It's still too early to judge it but I suppose that something too general can not be as good as something specific. For one simple reason, the additive complexity of adding more and more details to something over-generalized will eventually overhaul an individual because he might not be able to mentally organize all this information because to the mind it is still in one entity: google wave.
Even if google provides a universal communication service, it's still to be integrated into much more services. All blogs and all services with "commentable" contents has to support it to be really universal. However, even if that happened, the existence of provable trade-offs in human computer interaction for many factors including but not limited to: hardware costs, bandwidth limits, screen sizes, mobility, privacy, security, wide-spectrum usability, intuitive GUI, and nitty-gritty feature sets, makes it just infeasible to make one big universal communication service like google wave.
It might be solved with some sort of specialization, like google wave for the extreme-dull-mentallyRetarted-totallyUneducated-internetUnknowing-computerIlliterate-idiots, that is provided with totally different look and feel, and different set of simplified services. Then it can be feasible but the identification has to be different than "google wave", i.e. specialized, the opposite of general !
In conclusion, if you completed reading until this part then I know your name ;)

On spacetime, theory of incompleness and the axiom of choice (and the wave-particle duality)

2009-10-30T07:03:00.003+02:00

NOTE: No guarantee on the correctness of anything mentioned in this article. It's just impression on what I read and I might have got it wrong or haven't read enough.

"Past and future,..
relativity to the speed of light,..
light speed is constant to all observers, the difference is only in red/blue-shift."

1- Invalidity of using the terms "Past" and "Future" as dimensions because they are relativistic terms. We can say positive and negative because they are well defined in relation to zero. But past and future, by analogy is like saying positive and negative with regards to unknown variable x.

2- Assume there is a light wave moving in some direction A. And there are 2 observers. One moving in the same direction with speed I, and one moving in the other direction with speed K. Speed of light to both must have different signs. Also assume I=c, then the "relative" speed between the light wave and the first observer (let it be another light wave to justify it), would be either 0 or c). It should be 0 because otherwise this totally says that the speed of light does NOT obey the laws of algebra.

3- Red and blue shifts are confirmed by observations. But let's look closer at the cause. They say that it's blue if it's coming to you, and red if it's departing from you. If it's departing from you, then how you've got the light wave ? That means that light waves has no direction and they move in all directions at one with only difference in frequency. Imagine a light wave that consists of one photon, is that even possible !!

I don't mean to say that some of these results -which are confirmed with many experiments- are incorrect. I only mean that the explanation provided either needs a total rethinking or I need someone to explain it better to me.

The Godel's theory of incompleteness can be thought of having similarity to the liar's paradox. But however I don't think it's true. It says that given some formal axiomatic system, there is a statement that can not be proven (incomplete) or there is two contradictory statements that can be derived (inconsistency).

Well, incompleteness is relative to what is to be proven. There is no set of formal axioms that can prove everything. But the theory implies that no matter how much axioms we have we can not prove everything.

Ironically, this theory is unprovable ! However, I think that we should think of the domain of the field the axioms was set up for. The set of axioms are complete within the set of theories they prove. If you want to prove something else you changed your field and need axioms related to this field.

I discuss the axiom of choice as an example of that. Think of this result: axiom of choice is independent of ZFC ! Well, doesn't that reflect part of the insight of the previous paragraph ?

Think too that axiom of choice is needed in case your set has subsets which are actually intervals in the Real domain. I am not sure if anyone thought of this, or I am too ignorant or too lazy to read and search for it, but doesn't this signal the end of the domain of "discrete" sets into "continuous" sets ? There is a difference between infinite sets and continuous sets -in my humble/ignorant opinion. However the axiom of choice seems to me more like of a hack to get the -completely in other domain- set of ZFC axioms to work with continuous sets !

Back to the wave-particle duality of photons and waves. One experiment that make me think about it is the refraction experiment where you send a ray of light in a hole whose diameter is less than the wavelength, and you'll get refraction. They claim that if you sent photon by photon instead you'll get the same refractive pattern and the claim is that this confirms the wave-particle duality. However did anyone consider the fact that it came from incapability to orient the photon with this wavelength to be in the same position when in hits the hole ?

Back to quantum randomness theory, that everything in quantum world is random. However I do not think it's random. Seeming random doesn't mean it's random. And randomness -no matter how low- can not build such a bigger coherent system. There is rules and not being able to know the rules made some of us try to interpret it by randomness, shame on you, lazy guys. I agree with Einstein who said that "God does not play dice".

Please if anyone has any insights or corrections he is welcome to comment here for a discussion. Thank you for reading so far and I hope I could deliver my points.

Comic: Java

2009-05-20T01:11:00.000+03:00

ArabOS gets its first process scheduler !

2009-04-25T10:18:00.004+03:00

Screenshots of ReactOS Task Manager, Compiler on VS 2008 Express Edition and running on Windows Server 2003 R2

2009-04-03T04:31:00.001+02:00

3 years in 40 lines of code; ArabOS page allocator finally arrived al 7amd llah !!

2009-03-11T00:22:00.003+02:00

Written in C++, allocated 4 pages as shown al 7amd llah :D.
( p.s. 3o2bal el de-allocation and the sub-page allocator isA :) )

Captain Majid on a Famicom Simulator

2008-12-14T00:28:00.004+02:00

How to install the simulator (FCEUx) :
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=971455
(if you use Windows, then search for it yourself on google :P
it has a version on windows, but it doesn't work on VISTA !)

Arabization team:
http://www.geocities.com/arabic_majid/index.htm

Captian majid famicom game (ROM+Simulator):
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=21084678650&topic=5983

BONUS: Captain Majid PS2 !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLy7lBwmNjI

PS: the image is a GIF animation, I don't know why it doesn't animate unless opened in a separate tab alone (FF3). Any idea ?

System call graph for IIS/Windows and Apache/Linux

2008-09-30T05:39:00.003+02:00

Originally posted : http://www.thisisby.us/index.php/content/why_windows_is_less_secure_than_linux

This is a graph of system calls executed with IIS on a Windows Server, and the second image is the same for Apache on Linux. That's for rendering the same page with a single image.

Argument analysis - another non-technical useless post

2008-09-22T02:40:00.016+02:00

((( This post is about t scientific arguments, as in the method, presentation; and value, not as in the science itself )))

When two people engage in an argument, it's because they have colliding opinions on some issue, or they are not seeing the entire other side's opinion

There are 3 possible outcomes of an argument:
1- One side proves his opinion is correct/superior and the other one is wrong/inferior
2- They reach a compromise or a trade-off. In the first one (2A), they were both wrong, and in the second one (2B) they were both right
3- They fail to reach anything out of it

Outcome 1 and 2, will occur because one side is less knowledgeable than the other, in which case I wouldn't classify it as an argument per se but rather an inquiry (1A). But it also typically occur in research teams where the whole team is researching an new topic and no one is more knowledgeable than the other (1B).

Case 3 also doesn't qualify as an argument, because each side left thinking he is right and the other is wrong. Thus a consensus was not reached. There is 3 reasons why this can happen:
1- Communication failure (3A)
2- Both parties are not knowledgeable enough/or is too arrogant (3B)
3- The topic itself does contradict itself, or the field they were discussing was a based on pure un-proven theories (3C)
Each of these 3 cases doesn't allow for an "argument" in the first place

Case 2B (both right) can be divided into 2 cases 2B' and 2B''
- 2B' they didn't reach a trade-off but only demonstrated that they have the exact point of view but were failing to communicate
- 2B'' they reached a trade-off, combining pieces of knowledge and creativity they created something new

What we can come out from that ?
2B'' and 1B are great argument that leads to an advancement and is worth the time spent
1A is good, but doesn't really qualify as an argument

Other cases are just plain useless, waste of time, and worst of all, unweighted sum of 5 argument out of each 8 are so.
Weighted sum differes between different environment and cultures.

To analyse that, I'll split them into three classes, the Great (I), the Good (II), and the Ugly (III)
Class I contains cases 2B'' and 1B, Class II contains only case 1A, and Class III contains the rest.

I'll compare different environments here

(MPC = most probable class)

Environment	MPC
Univ	II
Barber shop	III
MIT	I (duh!)

I want to join MIT someday isA :)

Microsoft Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications

2008-09-12T17:20:00.006+02:00

Though MS have similar things since 2000's, but I just found about it today.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771470.aspx
Wikipedia is quite more informative
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows_Services_for_UNIX

For Linux guys, that means MS supports CC and X11, GDB, ls, kill, grep, awk, and the list goes on and on. As I understood from wikipedia, it comes with more than 350 such utilities.

CC is a wrapper around VC++. X11 doesn't come with a working X server so you'd use an open one like Cygwin/X.

To avoid confusing the reader, it's originally an implementation of the POSIX specifications (Portable Operating System Interface, an IEEE standard). I don't know why they took it from a defensive point of view and claimed it is only there to support UNIX apps..

UNIX apps can be source-ported, but not binary-ported. That means you have to recompile them on Windows to work there.

There were such a POSIX-compatibility implementation on Windows that I've heard of and used extensively (like Cygwin), but this is the first time for me to know that MS have "paid" developers to work on that :D :D

Wikipedia says that for Vista it only comes with Enterprise and Ultimate editions.

top 5 items in a TODO list...

2008-09-12T03:28:00.002+02:00

5- improve X

4- implement Y

3- comment the code

2- clean the code

1- testing n' debugging

So basically the software have not been tested, is lacking functions, and the implemented functions are not complete nor good, the code isn't commented and isn't even clean...

PS: inspired from the TODO list here
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2006-11/msg00149.html

Virtualbox seamless mode (screenshot)

2008-09-12T01:10:00.001+02:00

now that's CUTE

(a quote on google chrome)

2008-09-09T03:40:00.002+02:00

Quoting from http://www.sol-sd.com/news/119/ARTICLE/3310/2008-09-08.html:

Chrome alone will not be a major moneymaker for Google, according to the executives, but if Chrome can improve the user experience, that will encourage more Internet use and ultimately create more revenue for Google, they said.

So Google's main problem is to increase Internet use... Google then sees "Internet = Google"...

حيرة

2008-08-06T02:01:00.003+03:00

انا محتار
وانتا بتبدأ حياتك بعد التخرج بتلاقي اختيارات كتير اوي خصوصاً في مجالنا
يعني مثلا اشتغل ده ولا ده
بلاش
اشتغل اللي بحبة واتبهدل ولا اشتغل اللي مبحهوش واستقر ؟
طب انا بحب ايه اصلا ؟
وهل لو اشتغلت اللي بحبه حفضل احبه كمان كام سنة ؟
طب هو اني اشتغل اللي انا بحبه يسوى البهدلة ؟
قصدي هل حاجي كمان عشرة خمستاشر سنة واندم على اختياري ؟
لو اخيتاري للشغل اللي انا بحبه يعني اني اضيع سنين الله أعلم كام من عمري في الدراسة في دولة غريبة مع ناس غريبة وفي الاخر محوكنش كونت نفسي او استقريت ؟
طب ولو ضحيت بالسنين دي بعدها حفرق حاجة عن اللي قعد هنا واشتغل هنا واترستق ؟
يا ترى بعيد عن الجزئية دي هو غلط اني محاولش ابني مهاراتي التجارية والادارية -البحتة؟ مش قصدي ادارة انك تدير فريق قصدي ادارة انك تكون رجل اعمال ملكش دعوة بالتقنية
مرة سمعت مقولة انك المفروض تحاسب من احلامك عشان ممكن تتحقق.. هل انا فعلا خايف من اللي انا عاوزه ؟
ممكن نحاول نعمل حسبة بسيطه اعترف اني اول مرة احسبها وانا بكتب هذه السطور
لو قلنا مثلا سنتين ماجستير على تلات اربع سنين دكتوراه كده مثلا بقيت تلاتين سنة !!ـ
طب بعد مخلص الدكتوراه حيبقي شغلي عامل ازاي وفين ومستوايا عامل ازاي . الأكيد اني احتمال كبير مش حكون استقريت ولسه حدور على شغل بعد كده في مكان تاني والله اعلم طبعاً بس انا مش متخيل اني اكمل شغل في نقس الحاجة اللي كنت شغال فيها قبل الدكتوراة مثلاً
افرض اني بدأت شغل -على اساس اني استقر- بعد ما بقيت ٣٠ سنة ... عشان اكون نفسي حياخد مني وقت قد ايه ؟ قول خمس ست سنين ادي ٣٦ سنه.. ـ
في المقابل ان الناس اللي مش حيسلك نفس طريقي وحيكمل هنا في حاجة غالبا مش بيحبها وكمان حيبعد عن التقنية كلها في خلال ١٠ سنين على الاكتر حيكون وصل المرحلة دي وهو على ٢٧ ولو من غير جيش يبقى على ٢٦.. فرق ١٠ سنين...ـ
طب ليه اعمل في نفسي كده ؟
والله الحاجة الوحيدة اللى بحاول اقنع بيها نفسي ان بعد كل ده حيكون فاضل ٢٥ سنة لحد المعاش هو حيكون مش طايق الشغل وانا حكون رايح الشغل وانا مبسوط -غالباً يعني..!!ـ
ده غير ان انا حكون بعمل حاجة ليها عائد نفسي اني بفيد العلم بحاجة لكن هو بيعمل اللي العميل بيقوله عليه وخلاص والعميل طبعاً على حق !ـ
وبرضة المفروض ان شاء الله ان اللي معايا في الشغل ناس بتفكر ناس بتفهم ناس عاوزة تعمل حاجة، لكن اللي معاه في الشغل ناس حفظت الدوت نت فريم وورك وبيسمعوه في الكود وخلاص عشان ياخدوا قرشين ويروحوا -لا اهانة للناس دي ولا للدوت نت فريم وورك-ـ
هو صحيح مش كل الشغل حيبقى على مزاجي لكن على الاقل الجزء اللي مش على مزاجي برضة في تفكير
السؤال بقى هل في اثار جانبية هل في حاجات معملتش حسابها ؟ هل ده فعلاً اللي حيحصل ؟ والله اعلم طبعاً
على المدى القصير انا عارف اني مش حستحمل الديفلوبمنت العادية... ححس انها تضييع لوقتي حيث ان انا عارف انا ممكن اضيع وقتي في حاجات احسن !ـ
وبما ان انا جربت الداتا انتري فانا عارف احساسي حيبقى عامل ازاي...!!!!ـ
وعلى المدى القصير برضه، الشغل اللي انا بحبه رغم انه بالنسبة لي لذيذ وتفكير وكده بس فحت فحت فحت خصوصاً في البداية الكام سنة الاولنيين.ـ
قرار صعب اوي
خصوصا انه غير قابل للرجعة فيه الا بخسائر كبيرة - من ناحية السنين-ـ
يعني لو خدت قرار وبدأت فيه لازم اكمل فيه...ـ
في كمان اعتبارات تانية
الناحية الاجتماعية لما ارجع بعد ١٠ سنين مثلاً ان شاء الله حيكون اللي هاجر هاجر واللي نسي نسي واللي اتغير اتغير وخصوصا ان انا برضة مليش حد اوي هنا
حتكون حاجة صعبة اول عليا
خصوصا اني حكون لسة راجع من غربة ووحدة فظيعة
مش عارف
انا قلت كل اللي في قلبي
لعل وعسى حد يقرا الكلام دي ويلاحظ حاجة انا مكنتش واخد بالي منها او يديني نصيحة او يفكر معايا
انا بس مش عاوز العمر يعدي وتفوتني فرصة اني اكون عملت حاجة انا مش عاوز اقضي حياتي اروح شغل اخد فلوس اروح البيت مخنوق، انا عاوزها اكتر تكون اني رايح الشغل كانه هواية حاجة انا فعلا عاوز اعملها، اعمل حاجة مفيدة للعلم والمجتمع، اخد فلوس برضه بس مش حروح مخنوق
انا دايماً بفكر في حتة العمر دي لما الاقي حد طلع معاش
او اشوف حد كبير
اقول طب ده جه وراح وفي الاخر مزودش حاجة
يبقى لازمته ايه ؟
انا نظرتي للانسان انه وظيفتة في الحياة مش انه يشتغل ويجيب فلوس وسلامو عليكو
لا الانسان في نظري موجود عشان لكل جيل جديد الدنيا تبقى احسن مش بس ماديا لكن نفسيا، الناس تحترم بعض اكتر مثلا
لو فكرنا فيها انه مثلا الانسان ده زي النمل
في صخرة كبييييرة
كل نملة تيجي تدي زقة وتمشي
بعد اجيال كتييير حتلافي الصخرة اتحركت والنمل عرف يطلع
لكن تلاقة نملة مستفزة راكنة على الصخرة بتشرب سيجارة بكل برود ويعد كدة تمشي
اهه هي دي نظرتي للانسان اللي جه وراح ومزودش حاجة
ممكن واحد يكون زود حاجة طول مهو عايش لكن اول ما راح الحاجة دي خلصت مثلا مصنع والمصنع ده قفل عشان محدش عرف يشغله صح عشان هو معلمش حد ازاي يستعلمه او يحسنة او يضيف ليه
ده برضه زيه زي اللي معملش حاجة
الانسان عشان يكون عمل حاجة يبقى لازم يكون اضاف للي حواليه حاجة يستفيدوا بيها من بعدة او من غيره.. علم، احترام الاخرين،
attitude
طريقة تفكير
من الاخر يعني
عرف يدي زقة للبشرية والصخرة اتحركت فعلا
التاني ده عامل زي ما يكون رفع الصخرة سنّة وقامت راجعة تاني اول ما سابها
انا حاسس اني طولت عليكوا
وفعلا دي اطول بوست ليا بالعربي بس اول مرة اتكلم من القلب كده على البلوج
وعموماً احب اشكر القارئ انه كتر خيرة صبر عليا وكمل معايا لحد هنا
مش عارف اقفل البوست ازاي بصراحة
خلاص البوست خلصت.......ـ

ArabOS svn-revision 50 commit message

2008-06-20T21:35:00.003+03:00

Read it or not. If you are interested check http://arabos.googlecode.com/

* Renamed cpptest.h and cpptest.cpp to cpp.h and cppmain.cpp respectively.
* Renamed cppmain() to enter_cpp() and its duty now to provide a wrapper for the real cppmain(). It just wraps it with call_ctors() and __cxa_finalize().
* Added copyright notice to cppmain.cpp.
* Made the iso image path in bochsrc relative.
* Removed parallel port support from bochsrc because it caused a nag screen to show in bochs.
* page_table_entry is now unsigned long instead of long.
* Added printk() logging to control how many messages appear on the screen. That required moving the real impl of printf into print0 and now printf is just a wrapper around print0. That was needed to support transitive variable-length-arugments passing between several functions (printk should have wrap printf, no way to do it without supporting that).
* Converted most usages of printf() to printk() with respective log level.
* Fixed some signed/unsiged comparison compiler warning messages.
* Commented SHOW_STAT_FAILED calls.
* Cleaned cpp_rt_support.c a bit. Added some useful comments about the __cxa_XXX functions. And repositions some comments to be put in more relavent places.
* Renamed some stuff in the cpp_rt_support.c file, to confrom to the newly read Itanuim C++ ABI http://www.codesourcery.com/cxx-abi/abi.html :).
* The make clean command now deletes *.o and *.d in seperate commands because, if no *.o is present, no *.d would have been deleted ! That's because rm would produce an error that no *.o is present and ignore deleting *.d !
* Made the path relative in run.c (build environment change).

My poor PC ! (3 virtual machines, XP w/netbeans, XP w/VC++ express, and Vista) all up at the same time !

2008-06-11T23:15:00.003+03:00

Rapid compiler development !

2008-06-10T03:26:00.002+03:00

I ran today into a project called GNU Lightning. It's an assembly language generator that can generate for many CPUs and platforms.
Combining that with Lex/Yacc (lexer and parse generators) or flex/bison (free alternatives) all you have to do is concentrate on developing your syntax and translating your semantics to GNU Lightning format.
Cool..

Tana7a is ...

2008-06-10T00:26:00.003+03:00

Tana7a is when your task has to be done on windows and you do it on Linux
When your task is a Control Panel Applet and you develop the code on Linux
When you run the task you don't run on on real Windows (although you have one), but you run it on Qemu (virtual machine) with virtualized Windows...
If ReactOS was reliable, I would have used it instead too :D :D
Tena7a ba2a :D :D

Update: And when development on Linux fails cuz of the obstacles intentionally put for that, then you install VC++ Express/Platform SDK/ (and JDK too) ON THE VIRTUAL MACHINE and develop on the virtual machine ...

First screenshots of meemory RDBMS v0.0.1

2008-06-06T17:27:00.002+03:00

Implemented features:

Selection and projection.
A robust memory management module to report memory leaks.
Simple parsing of SQL statements.

Unimplemented features:

Saving to persistent storage.
Parsing standard SQL (92, 99, 2003)
Indexing, joins.
Rest of SQL features.

Project URL http://meemory.googlecode.com/ , developers are welcome.

تضارب مستفز في رفع تعريفة تاكسي العاصمة

2008-05-24T16:23:00.003+03:00

محافظ القاهرة: زيادة تعريفة تاكسى العاصمة إلى قرشا عن كل كيلومتر

الخبر بيقول انه تقرر رفع تعريفة تاكسي العاصمة من 110 للكيلو الى 125 و ذلك لمواجهة ارتفاع اسعار البنزين. و في نفس الخبر, فيما لا يزيد عن عدة سطور يشكر المقال في مشروع تاكسي العاصمة لمحافظته على البيئة و ذلك لأنه يستعمل الغاز الطبيعي.. بجد حاجة تنرفز!!
واضح ان متخذ القرار برضه شايف ان كده مش كفاية حيث انه بمناسبة هذه الزيادة المباركة فتم أيضا رفع تعريفة الأنتظار ل 10 جنيه في الساعة بدلا من 5... مع أنه المفروض أن الأنتظار لا يستهلك أي نوع من أنواع الوقود!!
و أخيرا يقول أنه سيتم تبديل سيارات التاكسي الأبيض في أسود المتهالكة بسيارات صفراء تابعة لمشروع تاكسي العاصمة و أنه سيترك الخيار للسائق أن يعمل مستقلأ!! عمله مستقلاً في حد ذاته ليس فقط هدم محتوم لسمعة تاكسي العاصمة (اللي هيا مش حلوة أصلا, حاحكيلكوا الحكاية ديه بعدين) و لكن أيضا دمار شامل للتاكسي الأبيض فأسود, طب ماهو كده كل التكوسه دول حيولوا أصفر مستقل و حيقوشوا الدور كله!

On Error Resume Next --- No Tech, Just Politics...

2008-05-23T22:01:00.005+03:00

For those who didn't use VB 6.0 the statement 'On Error Resume Next' means to ignore exceptions and just go on executing the next statement!!! I think the programmers who are reading will agree this is unbelievable bad thing. It means you will not know that things are going wrong, and will just be surprised when the program behaves incorrectly, and will keep wondering why!

This is what is going on with this country. When the education system ignores that students do not really understand anything from what they are supposed to learn and lets them graduate ignoring that fact, it has to deal with lots of future problems and consequences and will keep wondering why.

Why the production in our country is low-quality? why people are sitting in the cafes having no job? why the entire population have low confidence in our ability to do anything compared to the 'foreigner' (عقدة الخواجة)? why we have regular job 'repetitive jobs' not creative jobs? why Egyptian scientists are leaving the country? ... Why our education system is such a loser? why the educators are almost ignorant (they graduate from the same loser education system)?

It's all because we are letting the incompetents graduate from college. Not talking about engineering and medical school issue. It's all because even the good professors face pressure to make a certain percentage pass a certain course even if they are incompetent. Why? because if a huge percentage is failing, that means there is a problem with the professor. While more deep investigation will show that the problem is the entire education these kids have been through up to that point. And sure that won't please the people in middle-tier management (not the top head, nor the employees).

I mean the people in strong places but not absolute safety! It means they will be fired, face the community, etc etc. كبش فداء من الأخر. They are not punished for causing that, but they are punished they didn't hide it well. Although the entire population knows about it :D strange way of thinking; I keep wondering who are they fooling?? The entire three tiers know about the stupid education system (top head, middle-tier, and citizens).

It's like being bad students. They didn't study, and instead of facing the monthly exam to know how bad they are and study, they are just playing and having fun till the final!! With the exception is that the final isn't theirs. i.e. they are not the ones who are failing, it's the entire country!!!!

How could such thing be resolved? I keep thinking and I can't find an answer...

If Egyptian Have Invented Windows ... (a 10 years-old forwarded mail)

2008-04-23T21:49:00.002+02:00

Post #100 ! (Reserved)

2008-03-17T19:41:00.003+02:00

This is the 100th post in my blog. I think it should be special, and that I should have something special to write in it. I don't like that obligation, and I certainly won't stop writing until I find something special to write. So here I write this post, just to reserve the number, and I when I have something special I will come and write it here isA (if any special thing occurred before the 200th post anyway!)
So, see you later in Post# 101.

A story of him who wanted to not call the constructor !

2007-12-20T16:45:00.000+02:00

Hello there, everybody !
Welcome to my blog. Please seat yourself and enjoy the post.

Once upon time, a old wise man was sitting alone thinking in some problem that was taking all over his mind. He wanted to make things easier for the local programmers who use the RMI library. There problem was that to use RMI you need to override and implement certain interfaces. So the poor villagers, er, programmers had to work extra hours to harvest, er, design the changed system to adapt it to RMI specs.

The old wise man have figured out a simple way to help them. He can provide them with a magical bean, er, program that can do the tedious specs conformation for them. The magical bean overrides the classes and sends the overridden class over the network, instead of an evil magical creature, er, RMI artificial stub that throws them with rocks, er, RemoteExceptions.

The old wise man spent days and days working alone all the day long, until he finally produced what he have promised. The magical bean worked as expected. However, there were one drawback with that bean. It kills the other crops, er, remote stubs still call the default constructor of the super class. That constructor is meant to run on the server side. In some cases it can wreak havok if run on the client side; creating or deleting other crops, er, files for example.

That problem kept the old wise man up for 3 days. although it was the big feast, but he cared for the poor villagers more than his own joy. He set his mule up, and started on his way to search for a solution. Even if it took him to sweep the entire globe.

On his mysterious journey, he met a powerful wizard, called BCEL. BCEL claimed that he has a potion that enables the old wise man to control the magical bean to an unprecedented level. The old wise man believed him and bought the recipe. He spent the next weeks trying to prepare the potion. The results wasn't encouraging at the first, but as he got better in preparing it over time, the results got better.

Trial #1
Now it is the big day. He have gained enough skill to try to prevent that evil magical bean from invoking the constructor. He have manipulated the magical bean and removed the invoke that calls the super constructor. But the soil, er, JVM, struck him with lighting, er, exception that the object is uninitialized.

Trial #2
Bravely standing up after the lighting, he manipulated the magical bean again, to call the Object's constructor directly, without passing the on the original super constructor first. But still, JVM struck him again saying that the wrong constructor is being called!

Trial #3
He thought, if I can manipulate the magical bean's constructor, why don't I manipulate it's super constructor too ? And the next super one and so on. So staying for hours in his laboratory, he invented his own fertilizer, er, class loader. That special fertilizer has the ability to manipulate every magical bean, and even every normal bean that gets out of the soil. Yet he wasn't so lucky. JVM had to make his grow the magical bean twice every time he wanted harvest an RMI application.

The old wise man keeps trying, and hopefully soon he will be able to something. Even if he had to manipulate JVM itself!!

End of part 1...

Update 22/dec/2007: Using JVMTI (JVM Tool Interface) One could change every loaded class in the system. It can also redefine them as many times as he want to. And best of all, it needn't be native code ;).

Typical debugging session

2007-11-19T22:33:00.001+02:00

Typical debugging session...

Chat protocol v1

2007-11-11T17:50:00.000+02:00

5-way SIP
P1: s/a (SYN)
P2: s/a (SYN)
P1: hru ? (SYN/ACK)
P2: l7mdL u ? (SYN/ACK)
P1: l7mdL (ACK)

Session:
P1: s'up ? (PING)
P2: aho mashya, u ? / aho 3ayesh, u ? (PONG)
P1: l7mdL (ACK)

Session Suspension
P1: brb/afk (URG)
P2: tyt (ACK)

Half-closed Session Termination
P1: bbl (FIN)
P2: tyt (ACK)

4-way Session Termination
P1: i have 2 go now, need anything ? (SYN/FIN)
P2: no thx (FIN/ACK)
P1: s/a (FIN)
P2: s/a (FIN)

Session Reset
P1: i have to go now, salam (RST)
P2: ... (void)

The meta-effect

2007-10-28T12:38:00.000+02:00

Alan Turing, the mathematician, and father of computer science, died trying to prove somethings are fundamentally unprovable[1].

Finally this long-awaited article comes to light. People who read it might actually think I am really crazy. But I will write it anyway. I don't actually know if this is an already-defined theory with another name or not, but I've been thinking in it for a while now.

The meta-effect happens in every day life, and in different ways, but we never notice it. I've been able only to know 2 instances of it, one of which only exists in the meta-effect itself.

I don't know how to start but through an example, and I have one example as said above. You learn how to sum 2 numbers. Your teacher taught you how to sum two numbers, and he had learned how to teach you how to add 2 numbers. The guy who taught him how to teach you how to add two numbers have learned that too! I don't actually care about any of these facts, only do notice that I can go for ever.

How do humans learn things ? How do humans learn how they learn things ? How people analyze how they learned about they learning things ? Common fields facing that particular effect are psychologists, sociologists and natural language programmers.

That meta-effect things needs a lot of studies to know its true nature. For example, to which level should we go ? Or can we know a level without the other ? At which level there is no more useful information ? Do we need to advance to another level ?

The most fascinating aspect of all that, is how human mind can elevate in meta-levels like that. Studying the effect of how human analyze how their mind are in a higher meta-level, lets call it: meta-cognition-level-2, for short MCL2. In my last article what I was speaking about is MCL2. While we analyze MCL2, we are elevating to MCL3. As a rule-of-thumb, when you give a level a name, say MCL(n), you are actually at level MCL(n+1). In MCL2 we talk at MCL1. And when we talk about MCL2, we are at MCL3.

Warning, the next is much more complex!

We talked about meta-effect in learning, or some topic. What if that topic was the meta-effect itself ?! There is meta-levels, in a single topic. Each level analyzes the level beneath it. But what about analyzing the meta-levels itself (like in differentiation in calculus*). Let's call that, meta-meta-effect. Is there is a single meta-meta-effect for all topics, or there is separate one for each topic, or there is both ? Is the former a higher (another kind) of meta-meta-effect ?

Generalization

If we give a thread of cognition stream the name m/l/t, where m is the differential meta-level, l is the ordinary meta-level, and t is the topic, where t* is applicable to all topics. Normal everyday talk or thinking is 0/0/t*. Some advanced experience of learning activities involving consideration of previous learning experiences, is 0/1/t*. M/L/T (big letters are free unbound variables, means applicable to anything) where M > 0 is only applicable when talking about meta-effect.

Well, I might go more analytical next post isA.

[1] http://bestdocumentaries.blogspot.com/2007/09/dangerous-knowledge-full-documentary.html
* Cool, this might lead to some new science called cognitive calculus :D

30 Minutes is not the same as half an hour

2007-10-10T19:07:00.000+02:00

No it isn't playing with the words, so stop trying to figure it out that way.
As usual I have been digging in some stuff, this time related to Natural Language processing. And on the other side, I had to determine an estimate for a task in my work. Usually we measure tasks by hours. But the task was somehow small that it takes less than an hour. So I wrote 30 minutes.
After I sent the mail, I kept thinking, why didn't I write half an hour ? Inherently "half an hour" is more rough estimate than 30 minutes. Exactly like when you measure yourself to one and a half meter, against 150 cm.
It is about the scale, no; it is about the precision. I've always been fascinated how reading that the government have spent 30 Billion LE on that project seems normal, while reading that it spent 30,000 Million LE seems huge! Reading that it spent 30,000,000,000 LE would seem gigantic. 3 * 10^10, almost means nothing. Although they represent the same quantity.
What have derived this idea, is thinking how an NLP program will ever comprehend such style in understanding, which I believe is very related to how human mind evaluates things. It maybe even somewhat related to psychology than reasoning; subconsciously: that number takes that many characters, then it must be huge!
A theory I've been thinking in for a while, in NLP and Natural Language Understanding in specific, is that most babies know nothing about languages when they are newly born. Yet they function correctly. So language is complementary, but not essential in learning. Language only aids learning by adding new means to it: communication.
So I believe that before any serious trials are made to make a full natural language understanding program, knowledge representation and learning methods need to be formalized first. You can't add communication facilities to a program that will not use it. Well, in fact you can, but it is useless.
Babies see a bottle, then most of the time, they hear 'bottle', so according to the famous psychology phenomena "Conditioning"[1], both events: seeing a bottle, and hearing the word 'bottle' stimulate each other. That's simplified. It is actually kind of statistical learning. Over time, they learn to be more sensitive to some phonemes than the other, depending on the inherent probabilities in the language most common in their environment. "Koreans notoriously fail to distinguish 'l' and 'r' sounds"[2].
If I would guess similar pattern for vision, and motor skills. For example, I might guess that babies might see the percepted image as-is, but with the aid of the 3 dimensional perception, they can notice certain patterns as they move around, leading to detecting the boundaries of objects. As they do that, and over time, they learn the patterns, and the colors, and learn to use them to distinguish objects and extract them. I might use the existence of optical illusions as evidence. Somewhere in your childhood you have mixed objects like that. Kids usually deal with big cubes and learn the dimensions to sharpen the object-detection neural networks in their brains. And they grow up they get more exposed to more complicated patterns, like text for example.
So if we assumed a simplistic model, that a human is a combinations of sensors, and a statistical pattern-matching learning machine, and non-linear initially-empty knowledge/rule base, that is stimulated by the sensors and the pattern matching machine, then we only need to figure out the inter-dependencies between them and also figure out the abstract functionality contract for each of them, to be able to create a real NLU program sometime.
What on the stage now is artificial hard-coded NLU programs. what I am seeking is a self-learning NLU program, that can teach itself languages, and can then teach itself everything. Of course, sensors are needs, experiments which the system should go through (life-experiments) should be available to the system. But one more thing, that were not in the past assumptions can destroy all that. The assessment problem.
The assessment problem
On what basis should the program accept of reject a new piece of knowledge ? The program till now is only a pure knowledge collection machine, stimulated by external events. What's the use ? The program must ponder the knowledge it gained, and assess the acceptable and non-acceptable pieces of knowledge, especially that there is a lot of contradiction out there, because knowledge available in the world is highly affected by personal view points and preferences. How the program will learn the ability to compromise between two conflicting facts ? If there is two different view points, how can the program choose one ? Or should it compromise or select one, or worse yet, select only two from a set of contradictions ?
Humans, have been forged to the good nature, such contradictions and wrong choices affect their nature after that. It's a matter of trust, which source should the program trust ? And one what basis should it grant or revoke trust ?
This is far beyond the scope of NLU, or machine learning, this.. is .. humanity ! Yes, this is1 human kind. No application what soever will be able to reach that state consistently and independently. As you might have noticed, this is not first-order knowledge. They might create applications that understand first-order knowledge better than the human (i.e. some advanced sort of databases), but they will never create a program that can reach arbitrary orders of knowledge. At least not one that will be close the the human. The humans will prevail the top in that.

This article is related to the meta-ization phenomena that I wanted to write about a long time ago, I don't recall I wrote it yet.

References:
[1] http://www.alleydog.com/101notes/conditioning.html
[2] http://www.asian-efl-journal.com/dec_03_sub.K1.php

تجربه: مقتطفات رمضانيه 2

2007-10-05T02:55:00.000+02:00

ديه تجربه احط تدوينه من مدونتي السريه واشوف حتضحكوا عليا وﻻ لأ... اللي حيضحك حيعرف شغله!
لو حد عنده فكره
support
العربي زفت اوي كده ليه في بلوجسبوت يقولي

==============================================

التدوينه تبدأ من هنا ...

==============================================

المره دي التدوينه متفائله شويه

انا زي كل يوم مؤخرا مطحون طحن في الشغل و كان عندي فطار بره و كمان الشغل لازم يتسلم الساعه 9 و الشغل يدوب عليه الوقت اصلا من غير فطار. فضلت شغال لحد ما كان فاضل ربع ساعه على الفطار بقول حاخد تاكس. والمسافه اصلا برضه ربع نص ساعه كده حسب الناس متفقه عليا عشان تزحم الشارع ولا ﻷ. المهم قلت اخد معايا حاجه افطر بيها تحسبا للـتأخير.

المهم وانا في السكه التاكس بطء عشان واحد شاورله و فاضل 5 دقايق عالمدفع. اول ماقربنا من الواد اشرأب -حلوه اشرأب ديه- عنقه عادي يعني زي اي واحد بيوقف تاكس. التاكس طبيعي مفرملش عالاخر يعني و اذا بالواد يرمي لنا بشئ جوه العربيه. انا في الاول اتخضيت و بعد كده قلت اكيد ده اعلان - بس غريبه اعلان ايه ا للي قبل الفطار ده ؟؟ المهم طلعت في الاخر كيس بلح. انا بصراحه قعدت فتره على مستوعبت ان في ناس كده و بصراحه فرحت بيهم جداااا. و قعدت ادعيلهم من قلبي. و كمان شارعين لقيت اتنين تانيين. و كمان شارع لقيت واحد بيوزع ازايز ميه. و بعد منزلت من التاكس -و الادان بيدن- لقيت عربيه وقفت تديني بلح! لو شفتو التدوينه اللي قبلها والست اللي بتقول حاجه افطر بيها يابني. مش عارف اقول ايه يصراحه المهم ان انا مبسوط اوي.

—

الايام دي بروح المهندسين كتير. قبل كده كانت بالنسبه ثقب اسود لا ادري له مكان. المهم النهارده خدت بالي من حاجه عجبتني برده. الاشاره فيها عدادبيقولك فاضل كام ثانيه والاشاره تفتح او تقفل!! بصراحه حسيت اني احترمت اللي عمل كده عشان هو بيحترم السواقين. كان نفسي اخدلها صوره احطها بس للاسف معنديش كاميرا رقميه.

هي الحاجات ديه اللي مخلياني حموووت واشتري كاميرا..

نقطه تحول

2007-09-16T03:31:00.001+02:00

في حياه كل واحد فينا بتبقى في نقط معينه في حياته بتعبر عن تغييرات ضخمه في شخصيته. احيانا بتبقى النقط سببها تغيير في الظروف او الاحداث المحيطه بالواحد. مثلا على اعتاب مرحله جديده في حياته او نتاج تجربه معينه اثرت فيه او نتاج سلسله احداث سببت ظروف صعبه.
اكيد مثلا مرحله الجامعه ديه اثرت في كل واحد فينا تأثير كبير اوى مش حاقول اعادت كتابه شخصيتنا كلها.
انا بكتب التدوينه ديه عشان في نقطه تحول احتمال تأثر على تدويني كمان. اللي ملاحظ انا بقالي فتره مش بكتب كتير ( قال يعني كنت بألف كتب قبل كده :D ). بس في الواقع انا بقالي فتره بفكر احول اكتب عربي و كمان اكتب كلام عادي - يعني مش تقني.
للأسف الكلام العادي اللي انا عاوز اكتبه مش حأحس براحه الأ وانا مش معروف انا مين. بصراحه انا مكنتش بكتب غير تقني مش عشان معنديش حاجه تانيه اقولها و لكن عشان مش ببقى براحتي وانا مش عارف مين اللي ممكن يقرا الكلام اللي انا بكتبه.
و لما شفت مجتمع المدونين - خاصه المصريين - لقين ان نسبه كبيره منهم مش معروف شخصياتهم و انا حسيت ان ده بيدي حريه اكتر في الكلام. اه يعني القارئ احسن مني في ايه انه يكون عارف انا مين وانا اساسا معرفش انه قرا التدوينه, مش كده لازم يكون في عدل لازم يكون في مساواه ( مش المساواه التانيه قصدي المساواه بين القارئ والكاتب)
عشان كده قررت اخيرا اني اشارك في مجتمع المدونين المجهولين. و عشان كده برضه مش حابعت العنوان لحد نهائي.
بيتهيألي كده كفايه حد عنده سؤال ؟,

The dark forces of evil have conspired against this program !

2007-09-11T15:38:00.001+02:00

No comment... !

Update: As confusing as it may seem, but it has a reasons. The Java compiler doesn't recompile already compiled files if a file they depend on have been changed since the last compile time (doesn't consider dependencies). The SEGMENT_LENGTH _IN_KILOBIT is final static variable involved with other constants in an arithmetic operation, the compiler optimizes that (constant folding). So when CoolStreaming class gets recompiled (the value of that final static variable changes), this class won't get updated with new value, although the debugger did. A clean rebuild is sufficient to solve that.

When Math is Misused - Revenge

2007-07-21T01:02:00.000+03:00

It's revenge time. You should have read the last post on the same topic. I've got the chance to write a paper and I just wanted to see how it feels like to write such complicated mathematical stuff. The paper was about a min-heap and stuff, pretty simple and can be written in a few paragraphs. Take a look at the pictures.
The amazing thing is that after the 2 days I spent writing in 2 pages, I realized that well-formalizing the issue allowed for much much more potential that was initially possible. Initially we just move the load from a loaded machine to the lightest node in the system, but after well-formalizing the problem it is now possible to prove the degree to which this algorithm is really effective and efficient or not. It also showed me a point I didn't look to before, that if a machine get lightly loaded, it can take the load from other machines, without the need of the other machines to ask it to, and thus making real load-balancing.
I really was amazed not only because of the new potentials, but also that writing mathematic proofs and well-formalization is very much like programming, the logic of the proof follows like lines of code follows for the goal of the program/proof. I can say that I enjoyed writing that paper, well, like I do enjoy writing complex C++ code (and I do enjoy that more than games) (maybe it is cause I used the paper to learn Latex, I dunno).

The bigger view, redefining the impossible

2007-07-14T04:16:00.000+03:00

Many people of which I have dealt with, even if not saying it, are profoundly convinced that some of the applications which they use, maybe on daily basis, cannot be made by them. How many of the readers right now convinced that they can make, say, a web server, a SQL server, an OS, or a C++ compiler ? How many are convinced they can make a web browser!

I know some readers might think I encourage reinventing the wheel, they should know that this is not true. I mean that if a person knows and believes that he can make a wheel, he can then trust his own ability and imagination to start thinking beyond that and make a whole car, and maybe a space shuttle even. I am convinced that people who cannot trust their ability to make such -system- software are tied and will be forever dependent on other companies to make that software for them.

Under such circumstances it becomes natural why people limit their mind to predefined software categories, which have standard development procedures (i.e. web sites, database applications, etc..). In order to innovate you do not only need a vision, but also you need to trust your ability to achieve that vision. Often people disregard good ideas only because -deep inside- they know they can't do it. To hide that from themselves and from others, they tend to belittle the idea or call it foolish or inapplicable etc.

Thinking outside the box is also one feature of innovation. But to be able to do you need to know what's inside the box, and you also must have the liberated(1) thinking to do so. Because we are not surrounded by a lot of liberated minds, innovative minds might be afraid to go outside the box because they will be made fun of and belittled by those unliberalized minds.

(1): by "liberated" I mean those people who trust their selves and their thinking and are not tied by limited thinking of the surrounding environment.

I want to implant a certain concept in the minds of those people of IT in our country. Which is, nothing is impossible, and nothing is so hard that it can't be done. For example, you might think application X is hard to make. This is only built on the fact that you don't know yet how to make or how to approach it. But actually once you know the drill, it is almost like any other application you did (remember your first program, and your last program, and compare if you would have thought that this last one was possible when you did your first).

For example, from what I discovered, that the drill to approach an OS kernel is to make a simple Hardware abstraction layer (HAL) and to base other stuff (memory management, etc.) above it (like a simulation), and to approach the HAL you need to start by reading the Intel System Developer guide -for Intel systems-. The remaining is just regular work, read and apply, no thinking. (notice I said the drill to 'approach' not to 'make').

Also I found the way to start in an RDBMS is to start by making the Table class, and one-by-one add functionality to it (select, project, save, getSchema etc.). Once you've found a start point, the remaining, as I said, is just regular work, like any other program.

I know some people which was saying to me that making an OS and RDBMS is just reinventing the wheel and a waste of time. Well, I just wanted to know the drill, and know how they are done, so I can liberate my thinking and achieve the freedom of thinking and not to be limited by stuff I don't know. How are we going to innovate in such fields without that ?

I am not saying that the reader should go and -reinvent the wheel?- and make his/her own RDBMS or OS, but I am saying that if this what it would take to liberate your mind, then do it. Or take whatever necessary to liberate your mind. If just reading about them is enough for you, then be it. About myself, I had to do them myself, I just don't believe all I read, and I didn't think that the authors are better than me in a way that makes them able to do it while I can't.

All I want to reach in this article, is that don't think in terms of what's there, but think in terms what you can do. For example, don't think "This program doesn't do X :( I'll have to wait for the next release", but think "This program doesn't do X, so I'll make my own X!" or "I want a program that does X, there isn't ? I'll make my own :)" or better yet, "I wish I don't find a program that does X so I can do it!". And if you find such a program, you might take a look at the source to know how it was done.

One by one, you will reach a phase where you don't know the word 'impossible'. For example, imagine a program that you can ask to explain quantum physics for you, and the program scans the internet for it, and -built on your background, which he knows, cuz he chats with you a lot- he builds a tutorial with the style he knows that you prefer, and start explaining in a conversation with you, in which you can interrupt and ask, all in voice, not text. The program also can detect your face and knows when you look like you don't understand. I'll ask you: is that possible ?

Blogging Addiction Tag

2007-07-10T02:23:00.001+03:00

From Ahmad Essawy's blog tag

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