Moving Come hither...  ¶ 4:29 PM 0 comments

  I don't want these people on my Internet First it was the Israelis with their disgusting "electronic bullhorn". Now it's the Lebanese; the following is an e-mail message received from a Lebanese journalist whom I'd assumed could think matters through a little more carefully:


From: FOOBAR
To: FOOBAR@gmail.com
Subject:cyber soldiers - Arab IT experts, it's your turn
Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 13:48:51 +0300


Arab IT experts, we need to fight back. spread the word. Remember the 2000 electronic intifada? We need 10 times that.


With a link to this.

I don't want people like that on my Internet; I consider such behavior and the encouragement of such behavior worse than spamming and spammers.

My reply, in case it interests anyone, was this:


There's a difference between standing up for one's country and
encouraging juvenile keyboard warrior behavior.

I'm sorry for what happened to your country, and I was lucky enough to
get out a few hours before the airport was bombed.

Notwithstanding, my lasting impression has been that you are clever and
I'm sure you can do better than exhort people to abuse the internet just
because the other side is doing it.

Maybe Nietzsche can speak more eloquently than I:

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a
monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also
into you.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146
  ¶ 5:21 PM 2 comments

  Escape from Beirut I've had my share of eventful trips. There was the five hours I spent waiting for permission to enter Palestine, the propeller airplane from Copenhagen to Poland, and the transfer counter I upended in the transit lounge in Dhaka.

But to land in Cairo and hear that the Israeli army just shelled the Beirut airport (for the first time in ten years) from where I had just come, that was something else...  ¶ 4:09 PM 2 comments

  Working with microfinance I will be joining the Grameen Foundation in the capacity of Regional MIS Consultant for the MENA region. This is effective middle of March 2006.

I've been with IT Synergy for the past 13 months as assistant to the CEO; it has been a very positive experience working with open source in a generally friendly, hectic, and constructive working environment.

Now, I look forward to the challenges posed by the intersection of technology and microfinance. To kick off, I'll be traveling to Washington in the middle of March to meet some of the people I will be working with.

I look back fondly on IT Synergy, a baby I hope I helped raise. I look forward eagerly to working with the Grameen Foundation.  ¶ 7:56 PM 5 comments

  PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: O2 Considered Harmful

As Big Pharaoh reports, avian influenza is airborne. The transmission of H5N1 occurs through respiratory action on behalf of the infected hosts.

Currently, this has resulted in the release of an advisory recommending under-indulgence in consumption of atmospheric air unless absolutely necessary (i.e. if you have a medical condition and need to). People refraining from unnecessary air intake have been found to display proportionately lower infection and fatality rates.

Egyptian authorities have responded positively to this threat vector. The mobilization of air force assets aimed at the reduction of air borne hosts bearing H5N1 constitutes an effective and organized government response to this threat.

Please pass this information on.

  ¶ 9:39 PM 0 comments

  The Egyptian Bird Flu Propaganda Machine

The Egyptian State Information Service has been quick to throw up a website devoted to the issue of the H5N1 avian virus in Egypt.

Some of the news releases are hilarious. Here's one good bit:

For his part, Ahmed Tawfik, the head of veterinary services in Egypt, assured the public that farm chickens, if infected, would not in anyway be able to reach consumers because they would not be able to outlive the disease.

The logical conclusions from this statement are truly wondrous. He's saying basically that since H5N1 renders the chicken dead, therefore none of these dead chickens reach the consumer anyhow. Which really means that we should only buy live chickens from Carrefour and Metro because, erm, live chickens... can't have... bird flu...?

Brain... explode...

  ¶ 9:02 PM 1 comments

  I am not only stupid, I am also a Nazi

That is apparently the opinion of the Egyptian mufti, Ali Gomaa. In an interview with Politiken, another Danish newspaper, he was quoted as saying that Danes must all be stupid and that they are behaving like the Nazi regime in World War II.

Thanks. I'll take your definition of idiocy over your brand of intelligence any day, fella.

  ¶ 7:57 PM 1 comments

  Working within the Danish system as an alternative to burning and boycotting It is a cultural disconnect that Moslems offended by the cartoons published in JP think that the Danish government can at any level dictate what a Danish newspaper does or doesn't do. In a way it is more a reflection of the socio-political environment which these people inhabit (quite against their will; it's an environment they were born into).

To contrast, Egypt is not a secular country. The country's constitution deliberately, clearly, and repeatedly refers to religion being a prime motivator and ingredient in statehood (e.g. the constitutionally mandated religious education in schools). This can explain why Egyptians fail to understand that the cartoons don't constitute an actual Christian insult.

Furthermore, the entanglement of Ahram and Akhbar with the government to the extent where they are considered government mouthpieces goes some way towards explaining how even some otherwise intelligent Egyptian muslims will say that they think the Danish government ought to apologize.

It's just ignorance, that's all.

I'm not going to educate about free speech, separation of religion from government, or any of that stuff here. Unfortunately, the kind of people likely to read this post will already know this, and (to use a metaphor which I hope won't be taken out of context by some hotheaded defender of Islam), I will not preach to the choir.

What I do want to highlight, however, is some news from Danish newspapers.

It has been my position from the beginning that the only appropriate action of response to these cartoons (some actually offensive) is through the courts. It makes no sense to clamor for the amputation of free speech with exceptions when appropriate machanisms exist. In Denmark, there are two such mechanisms.

1. There is something called Pressenævnet which is the media watch dog. The head of Pressenævnet stated today that they had received no complaints at all regarding these cartoons, and that he was slightly mystified why no one had complained. You know, instead of setting fire to, erm, Austrian and Norwegian embassies. In any case, complaints must be registered a maximum of 4 weeks after publication of the relevant material, so it's too late now. Ahmed Akkari, a spokesman for a Danish muslim workgroup, said that he was not aware of the existence of Pressenævnet. Err...

2. The second course of action would conceivably have been in the courts. According to Danish law, racist statements and actions and blasphemy are punishable by varying prison sentences. Now, the state prosecutor is currently assessing whether to bring case against JP, but his initial reaction has been negative. On both counts (racism and blasphemy), he says that the satire contained in the bomb cartoon is not directed at Muslims in general but at extremists, in which case it is an accurate satire. And since it is directed at extremists and not God, then there goes the blasphemy charge. In any case, he is still looking at them.

Ingen kommentar.  ¶ 3:03 PM 2 comments

  The End of the Dialog between the Danish Government and Muslim Imams Living in Denmark The Danish Integration Minister (a ministerial post with a mandate to work to ensure that minorities such as Muslims can integrate well with Danish society) has announced the end of any dialog with Muslim leaders.

Calls for dialog and invitations to speak from the Prime Minister and the Integration Minister were snubbed by Muslim leaders. The Muslim leaders apparently made public statements to their constituencies that they were not interested in such dialogs.

The source, from Politiken.

لا تعليق.  ¶ 12:03 PM 1 comments

  The real story of the Danish cartoons What the ignorant sad excuses for humans who are protesting don't know is that these cartoons originated out of an initiative to improve Danish awareness of Islam.

Kåre Bluitgen is the name of the man who wrote a children's book entitled "The Koran and the Prophet Mohamed". In his words, the motivation was that since Muslim children have to go to Danish schools in Denmark, and I quote, "These children must learn about Danish heroes and Danish children should learn about Muslim heroes."

Being a children's book, he could find no illustrations and this led to the whole cartoon idea at Jylland's Posten.

إللى إختشى مات.

Det var alt hvad jeg har at sige i dette emne. Sikken idiotisk masse folk...

In english; the author, and from Jylland's Posten.  ¶ 1:43 PM 0 comments

  On being unapologetic for supporting free speech and having half a brain I don't have much time to blog anymore mainly due to work pressures, but it is worth a few minutes of my time to express my position of absolute support for the way in which the Danish government has handled the Mohamed cartoon affair.

I am half Danish and half Egyptian. Has I been in the role of the Jyllands Posten Editor, the Prime Minister of Denmark, the Foreign Minister of Denmark, or any other Danish official who has commented and reacted thus far, I declare that I would have behaved exactly as they did.

They have my support.

There can be no exemptions from free speech; no one is given special protection. There is no room for privilege in free speech. Offensive cartoons like these demand class-action lawsuits against the newspaper, no more and no less.

People should stop wallowing in their collective victim complexes.

Come next elections, my vote is going somewhere more towards the right. I don't want people in Denmark who hold up placards calling for beheading.  ¶ 3:04 PM 1 comments

  Hvor dumme kan Egypterne blive? Det gør næsten ondt at se hvordan Egyptiske muslimske folk har taget op mod Danmark, de Danske, enhvær ting skandinavisk, ja næsten alting som har noget at goere med Jyllands Posten (og mange som har ingenting at gøre faktisk).

Jeg er ikke sikker om det gør ondt fordi det er så morsomt, eller fordi det er et klart tegn hvor idiotisk en folk kan blive.

Det Egyptiske blogosphere har erlkæret "økonomisk krig" og har blandt andet vist billeder af hvad de kalder "Danske barcodes". Uha! På en Egyptisk IT mailing list er der en som har skrivet hvad kan kun betragtes som en slags erklaring af dumhed hvor han foreslager at den Danske avis kan muligvis - under oversigten af Al Azhar, en stor Egyptisk Islamisk institution - oversatte koran verser (sådan bruges IT mailing lists i Egypten, ser det ud).

Ja det er næsten for meget at se sådan en bølge af dumhed samle sig op. Det er derfor jer skriver min første blog post her i Dansk (og ikke min sidste); for at vise hvilken side af denne "konflikt" jeg står på. Som en Dansker or som en Egypter er det vigtigt at tale op.

Undskyld mit Dansk; det har været en lang tid. Hvordan skriver man egentlig Egypt i Dansk? Er det Egypten eller Ægypten?  ¶ 11:43 AM 4 comments

  Mindless Egyptian Parliamentary Elections Knowledge Propagation Unsubstantiated rumors from some moron in Zagazig today:

14:42 <+BooDy> back from the elections
14:42 < YoussefAssad> BooDy: any polling station problems
14:42 < YoussefAssad> ?
14:42 <+BooDy> damn I love this city even the thugs are polite :P
14:43 <+BooDy> YoussefAssad, thugs are seperated to groups they go pay every station a visit and the moment police 
               forces arrive they run and go to the next station
14:44 <+BooDy> YoussefAssad, police is neutral this time they are protectening everyone even ekhwan's main office
14:45 <+BooDy> protecting*
14:46 <+BooDy> everytime I go to take pictures I'm a few moments late and I couldn't get good pictures of the thugs
14:47 <+BooDy> my sister got cought in the middle of a fight and thugs threatened her with senag but the police was 
               there on time thank god
14:48 <+BooDy> I heared that someone got killed in the same lagna but I'm not sure yet

Terminology for the unititiated:

thugs = NDP affiliated campaign boosters with a propensity to excessive proselytization
senag = knives which are not used in the kitchen
lagna = polling station, or police highway checkpoint. In this context, the first definition stands
BooDy = Hopeless virgin  ¶ 2:53 PM 0 comments

  Someone at Yahoo News has a sense of humor (INCORRECT) Army aims to coax back former troops - Yahoo! News is th title of the story they are running. Go on, click on the link; have a look at that picture. Recognize that scene?

Full Metal Jacket, Stanley Kubrick. A movie about Army abuse.

UPDATE: Apparently, I am wrong (as duly pointed out in the comments by craig); this is an actual picture of Marines. For anyone who's seen Full Metal Jacket, you will still see the uncanny resemblance; I suppose Kubrick really does his homework.

Thanks Craig!  ¶ 12:51 PM 4 comments

  Girls can´t do proper science fiction Life just isn´t fair.

While I love scifi and Chiara doesn´t, these days the cruel irony is I´m having a random assortment of nightmares whereas she gets to dream (as she did last night) of being on a spaceship, of all things.

Let me tell you, if I were to dream of being on a spaceship, it wouldn´t be long before the lightsaber fights broke out and the alien babes made their appearance. If one is to dream of science fiction scenarios, one is to do it right. Essential elements include the abovementioned but can also contain space dogfights, magical powers (I didn´t say Jedi; I want to be inclusive), galaxy-wide quests for rebellions against evil empires, and many other exciting things.

Chiara tells me that the main thing about her science fiction dream was finding herself in a space suit, looking at the boots, and wondering if there was any purpose to the boots having the shapes of toes molded into the exterior.

No laser swords, just amusement at the shape of the boot of the space suit.

Argh!  ¶ 1:52 PM 1 comments

  Photos of the Sudanese Protests in Cairo
Chiara and I ran down to Gamaet el Dowal street yesterday to get some snapshots of the protesters. I've uploaded the resulting pictures into a flickr set which you can find here. A lot of these slogans are quite something; you'll do better if you can read arabic. We weren't able to get many before the police chased us off, which I suppose they aren't exactly authorized to do (viva the emergency law). It's a shame, since some of the protesters had invited us inside the protest camp.

My personal favorite is the one stating that the refugees refuse local integration.  ¶ 6:20 PM 2 comments

  Negroponte's Pipe Dream There has been much chatter recently about Negroponte's 100 dollar laptop. Working in ICT4D and also in one of Negroponte's target countries, I have been lukewarm to the idea and have decided to put in words the reasons for this. Other people have already discussed the intricate economic compromises Negroponte has had to make, such as the tomfoolery of mandating seven digit bulk orders. I've got other reasons for thinking his project unviable.

The nutshell edition of my reaction is, don't bother. This thing won't take off.

For this thing to work, it requires a social environment where a family regards its primary objective as the furthering of the welfare of the child; otherwise, how do you think a public sector employee can justify spending 4 or 5 months' worth of salary on something like this? In many families in developing environments, the primary economic goal is not stimulation of future economic potential of children, it's keeping them fed and clothed.

Assuming that the family is interested primarily in furthering their children's skill arsenal with computer literacy(which it isn't), then the family provider (usually father) will need a clear vision of how this machine will give his child a clear economic advantage or edge. The fact is that the logical link between computer skills and economic betterment is tenuous enough for it to be easily missed. Most fathers are going to say something like "What is my son going to do with a computer, play games? Why should he learn to program, he should learn how to make furniture or fix plumbing, those people make money." In the LDCs (Less Digitized Countries, to hijack a well worn acronym), the import of computing access is underappreciated and often misrepresented as a frivolous investment or pastime. This requires awareness building on the medium term, something which I don't see Negroponte working on.

Negroponte is right that reduced cost makes for improved access to computing facilities, but he's wrong that this automatically means the cost of a new computer. It's clear that he either hasn't lived in a developing environment for long or, if he has, he's failed to adapt his beliefs to the facts on the ground.

The only way to reduce costs of computing access is to prolong the employment lifecycle of hardware and induce rapid hardware turnover. In other words, letting "obsolete" hardware trickle down in cost and ownership.

If my theory is correct, which I'll bet the farm it is, then we'll have Moore and Gates and the Nvidia/ATI marketing departments to thank for bringing computers to the masses. ICT4D professional finds reason to thank Gates, you read it here first!  ¶ 10:38 AM 2 comments

  Hurricane Devastates Browser I've seen weird bug reports in my time, but this one deserves a special mention on this blog. Verbatim from the firefox mailing list:

Ever since Hurricane Wilma power outage my Firefox seems to be jumping
on random pages. I checked on a topic similar to this but all my
settings were where they were supposed to be.

I once talked an aunt into believing that her new computer would catch a virus if she left the window open at night. What is disturbing about this guy is that he apparently doesn't need a crafty and mischievous villain like me; he comes up with these exotic and entirely misguided notions in what appears to be a completely independent manner...  ¶ 11:17 AM 0 comments

  The Idiot Parade II Today, I learnt that it is possible to reach the age of 28 without a functional brain, without medical intervention too it seems.

A certain Mr. A.R. (name withheld to protect the... err. Never mind.) had an appointment for a job interview with me at 4:00 p.m. Said Mr. A.R. seemed to think it would be a bright idea to bring along a friend of his to do an interview too. Commendably, I found the Buddha in my heart and as a consequence Mr. A.R. has not had his limbs torn off.

The only question is which one of them is considered stupider; the one who thinks that a job interview is something he can pass along to a friend, or the friend who shares this lack of respect for common sense.

The good news is that none of them had wedding rings on, so ofr the time being the gene pool is not entirely dead.

I suppose that, much like driving, if you can manage an IT company in Cairo you can manage an IT company anywhere.  ¶ 7:00 PM 0 comments

  Tecchnical Ingenuity, Egyptian Chutzpah
One thing you notice living in this country is that Egyptians can actually be quite ingenious when not being so threatens their bank account.

Another thing you learn is that it is possible for the word 'ingenious' to acquire negative connotations; in other words, there's breeds of genius without which the world would be a far more rational and forgiving place to live.

In this picture, a poor unsuspecting Jeep appears to have had terminal problems with the passenger seat. I think, from an aesthetical perspective, this picture about sums up Egypt in the 21st century.  ¶ 12:39 PM 3 comments

  The UN Invents Self-financing Finance While digging around for some information on the UN, e-governance, and Egypt I came across this little nugget:

The schedule of daily subsistence allowance rates is available by subscription at an annual cost of US$295 plus US$55 for postage.

The daily subsistence allowance is supposedly what the UN pays for UN personnel who are travelling, apparently.

Sheer genius! Charge people who need to inquire about travel allowance just enough do they actually need travel allowance! And naming it "subsistence allowance"? Kofi, well done.  ¶ 7:45 PM 0 comments

  Monkey see, monkey doo

It was not something I was able to resist. Chiara says my impression of the guy is rather good, though I suspect it isn't a very marketable skill to be able to look dumb at will.  ¶ 11:44 AM 4 comments

  The Idiot Parade I get a lot of CVs where I work; there's a certain air of desparation about unsolicited job applications. It's been a veritable freakshow of how someone can do the absolutely worst job of presenting themselves; in many cases it can be something of a challenge looking through a CV for signs that the person it purports to describe may one day have had a brain.

I'm not being mean, I'm not. If you were applying for a job at an open source consultancy would you attach your CV in .exe format?

Permit me to take a random sample of quotations from just one CV I got today:

I'm also Cisco uncertified (CCNA)

What, is it fashionable to list on one's CVs the things they cannot do? I think I'll add a line to my CV saying that I am entirely unqualified to perform as midwife. More, from the language skills:

Native language is Arabic. All School years and College instruction language was English. Read and write English very fluent. My conversation skills are as much as I read and write English. I can deal with French but kind a weak. I traveled to the United States and Canada three times during the last five years and was able to communicate and interact without any problem at all.

For varying interpretations of "fluent", I suppose...  ¶ 12:49 PM 3 comments

  Mangle you, Freud! They're having a perl (a computer language for people with social disabilities) conference over in Israel in 2006; a guy called Gabor Szabo anounced it today on the Egyptian Linux Users' Group website.



While it's nice that the Israeli perl developers are inviting Egyptians to participate, you'd think that computer nerds could keep the politics out of it. But Freud will have his way; in the announcement, Mr. Szabo invites us to "mix and mangle" (his words) with other Linux users. It's possible that he meant mingle, of course, but one never knows...

In any case it's clear that they are planning an apocalyptic scenario; conflict between Arab smelly hardcore nerds and Israeli smelly hardcore nerds. Whatever the outcome of this planned conflict, the rest of humanity stands to win.

Mangle you, Gabor!  ¶ 1:05 PM 0 comments

  I, Strategic Consultant I was involved as a Local Expert in a study funded by the European Union to assess the Egyptian ceramic sector; we presented last June, and the Industrial Modernization Center have finally uploaded our study.

I present, without further ado, the link to the study (the pdf file).

A man of many talents, I am, bet you didn't know that!  ¶ 4:39 PM 0 comments

  The Egyptian Linux Users' Group's Second InstallFest 2005 I was not an active participant in the installfest this year; partially due to lack of time and partially out of a desire to see the LUG grow up and find itself new cadres of dynamic people to lead it out of dependence on the four people who founded it (being one of those four myself).

Yesterday was the InstallFest, and I am extremely proud of what I have helped create. The boys were organized, visitors went away intrigued, impressed, and sold on open source. The atmosphere was friendly, relaxed, and exciting.

I'm really proud of what I have helped to create. I am proud of being able to reach people in a way which Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, and HP to name a few never will dream of being able to. Evidence? Look at this picture:



If that isn't the most remarkable marketing picture for Ubuntu anyone has ever seen I'll be damned. Mark Shuttleworth, you owe me!  ¶ 11:23 AM 3 comments

  On a pedestrian bridge in Cairo, I saw... A pile of dog shit.

A syringe.

One dead bird.

The little boy couldn't have been more than seven. He was balancing on the railing two stories above the ground on his stomach, feet off the ground. He asked me for a cigarette, Mister, a cigarette Mister!  ¶ 4:34 PM 1 comments

  Scemo, pazzo!
Chiara and I have two cats, two boy cats. Our two boys are such extreme opposites that it is considered evidence of the existence of God that nuclear war hasn't broken out at home yet.

Pousky (a.k.a. Pouskin, a housecat and not a memer of the Russian ruling elite, at least as far as I know) is big, white, very fluffy and furry, very slow, addicted to love in the forms of chin scratching, and capable of inflicting unspeakable horror with the hundreds of metric tons of cat shit which his industrial digestive system cranks out. Poushy is my cat.

26 is a street kitten we picked up. 26 is small, jet black, far too fast for anyone's good (including the furniture), and gluttonous as evidenced by his belly which makes him look a little like a furry black football which meows. 26 is Chiara's cat.

Now, while we both own both cats, we like to say that Poushy is mine and 26 hers. So, in the name of teasing and to prove through the vox populi that I'm right when I say her cat is awful, I've uploaded a picture of him to Kitten War. You can find our rascal here.

At the time of writing this, 26 has lost his first Kitten War. Let the losing streak begin!  ¶ 3:01 PM 0 comments

  Camel Paparazzi

One of the best pictures Chiara and I got from Newebea; clearly, the camel is getting tired of posing for tourists and is about to slap the guy around a bit.  ¶ 1:25 PM 1 comments

  The great corrupter! My girl starts to blog! I am, I am!

My better half just opened a blog; my influence is strong. We'll make a Linux/internet nerd out of her yet! (perhaps in retaliation for her making me do things like eating well). To commemorate this, my hitherto favorite photo of her and I:



  ¶ 5:17 PM 1 comments