I am a Linux fan. A quick look at my site will tell you that. So naturally I was pleased when Google announced a new Linux distro (Google’s “Chrome OS”). It is good because it will hopefully encourage more OEMs to write better drivers for their hardware.

What I hated though is how some techies and all techy-wannabes had a spontaneous collective orgasm at the first sight of the news. I mean come on! I think some of the guys at TechCrunch had to go change their pants after they read the announcement. Heck, this guy at the “IT Portal” has already written 5 Reasons To Love Google Chrome OS and the product doesn’t even have a web page yet! I like how he explained “reason #3″:

Google has a blank canvas to work with and doesn’t need to rely on code that is 15 years old, nor does it have to deal with software compatibility issue

Oh really ? Somebody should tell that guy that Linux (what Chrome really is) was first written in 1991 and is thus 18 years old!

Finally, some common sense articles are popping up. I like this one (specially how he catches TechCrunch for calling an OS like Linux a mere “bag of drivers” .. anyone who knows anything about operating systems knows that is not true). This article is also nice.

There are reasonable predictions of what we can expect from Google Chrome OS, and I’ll try to talk more about this later.

P.S: I hate over-hyping. I REALLY REALLY HATE over-hyping. That is why I dislike Apple, they overhype everything, even basic features! In all fairness, Google didn’t overhype Chrome, but many of those “techies” did.

At first she was cute and fun to hang around with. Then as i got to know her i realized that woman had only two modes: off and crazy. The latter was more prominent than the former. I have had enough. My problem is that i can’t just switch off, i tend to overthink it. I hate to impose, so i keep my thoughts to myself, and just try to understand why would a person behave in her way.

But now i’ve decided. Enough is enough. I must disengage. Let the demons clear out of my head. Let me sleep the night again.

… each of us is insignificant, but we are all important.

-OR-

… we are all insignificant.

You might have the truest message and the most noble cause in the world. But if you don’t present it in an acceptable way to the rest of the world then nobody is going to accept what you are talking about. Worst still, it will most likely negatively affect the cause you are trying to help. You always have to appeal to your audience regardless of the circumstance.

I see this often in Arab-Israeli debates. There is no doubt that we Palestinians have had tremendous injustice bestowed upon us, and we’ve been constantly wronged for the past 60+ years. Yet, Israelis know how to appeal to external/western audiences. There is no magic there, no great conspiracy. Just basic carefully examined messages.

Always know your audience. People in the USA have different mentalities than those in Britain, or France, or Turkey, or Palestine, or Pakistan ..etc. So naturally, what might be a sound argument in one place could be totally useless somewhere else. In Arab-Israeli debates many people immediately jump to issues from the time of the British mandate or 1948. Why ??!! I honestly think this is a bad dialog course. There are far more contemporary immediate problems that we can talk about (and try to resolve). Shouldn’t we try to solve the immediate problems first before tackling the big grand picture problems ?

When talking to people you have to befriend them and think like they do. People are more willing to engage in the viewpoint of somebody who is similar to them rather than somebody who is very different. Never come off too strong. Never be inflexible.

I am often asked questions about the situation in Palestine by Americans. I found it best to start out by telling them the simple most basic things. That is, we don’t like violence. Like them, we too like to live peaceful lives. We like to be able to live, work, visit family, and go about doing our business without hassle. That the vast most Palestinians are not hell-bent on the destruction of Israel but rather want to live normal peaceful lives. Then I tell them how ordinary people who haven’t done anything suffer. How we have more than 500 checkpoints in the West Bank that prevent us from moving around, how Israel imposes city-wide curfews, how people can not move around freely or conduct business freely, how the mobile telephone company struggled with Israel for more than a year just to import a single retransmission tower to meet the increase in demand. I tell them my personal story. People do respond when you tell them about your personal story.

Anyway, this came to mind after seeing what happened in the recent U.N. racism conference. I do not agree with the Iranian president, but he was trying to use Palestine as an excuse for whatever he wants and he was trying to present a case in which, as always, he came off as a nut-job to the west and just managed to hurt the true message of the Palestinian struggle with his idiocy.

For a while i haven’t been having any (or any significant) dreams when i sleep. Maybe it is due to exhaustion or a temporary slump in creativity. But my night dreams are back again, and boy they are better than ever!

Honestly, my last few dreams have been amazing; the view point, the music, the dramatic climactic plot .. they are fairly complex for 2-5 second dreams, and they are a major step up from what i used to dream before. You might think i am exaggerating, but last night’s dream was most definitely a work of art . For example, the beginning of the dream was narrated and was in a yellowish color scheme. The view point was not static, it moved in complicated ways. For instance, at some point i was seeing things from an vantage point hovering in the sky then all of a sudden rushed between incoming heavy traffic (including some vehicles from Red Alert 2). I was seeing things as if i was accelerating between the vehicles going in an opposite direction of them. The only fitting music for that segment would have been Verdi’s Dies Irae Requiem.

I know what you might be thinking, and no i haven’t seen a movie since at least two or three weeks. Nothing super dramatic has been happening in my life .. just the dreams got better

Unfortunately, as all dreams, this one ended before i wanted it too. Don’t you hate it when you’re dreaming and then you get disrupted and you get into a state when you are not dreaming any more but you are not quite awake yet ? Then you try to get back into the dream but it doesn’t work ? Then you try to stimulate your mind by trying to think of a continuation for the dream and it sometimes succeeds and you’re back in and sometimes it doesn’t. Well unfortunately this was one of those times when i couldn’t get back to my dream. Ahhh .. only if there was a way to capture dreams and continue them over multiple nights

تنويه: كُتبت هذه التدوينة في اليوم الأول للهجوم الدموي الهمجي الإسرائيلي على سكان غزة. هذه التدوينة تتكلم عن الخيارات وقت التهدئة والهدوء النسبي وليس أثناء العدوان الإسرائيلي الدموي.

أنا فلسطيني وأحب فلسطين حتى آخر قطرة دم في جسدي. وجزء من الحب أن تنصح من تُحب حتى لو كانت كلماتك قاسية قليلاً. أنا أعرف أن كلامي قد لا يروق لبعض الناس، وخصوصاً في هذا الوقت، ولكن علي أن أقوله.

إن ما يحصل في غزة جريمة بكل ما تعنيه الكلمة. إنها جريمة بحق الفلسطينيين والعرب وحتى البشرية جمعاء. فهل يُعقل أن يُقتل أكثر من مئتي إنسان في ساعات قليلة بدون حق؟ أيعقل أن يستمر قتل الأبرياء والأطفال بدم بارد؟ أيعقل أن يستمر العالم بالسكوت وإدانت المُعتدى عليه والإشادة بالمعتدي؟ هذه جريمة على أكثر من مستوى.

ولكن دعونا نكون موضوعيين للحظة. هذا الوضع ليس جديداً علينا، فقد تكرر مراراً على طول السنين ولم يتغير به شيء. عندما ندفن شهداءنا هذه المرة، دعونا نفكر قليلاً.

ما هو الحل؟ وماذا علينا أن نفعل؟ هل نستمر برمي “صواريخ” القسام الفارطة؟ ماذا أنتجت هذه المواسير الطائرة؟ هل سمحت لأي نفس في غزة بأن تأكل وتنام؟ هل سمحت للأب في غزة بأن يوفر حياة لعائلته؟ البارحة تم إطلاق 80 من هذه المواسير ما أسفر عن قتل إسرائيلي واحد. ماذا كان الرد؟ إسرائيل إستعملت أسلحة حقيقية وقتلت أكثر من 200 من أًطفالنا ورجالنا ونسائنا.

يا إخواني الزمن تغير: إسرائيل أقوى الآن من أي زمن مضى، والدول العربية أضعف من أي وقت ماضي، والفلسطينيين في غزة أجوع وأمرض من أي وقت ماضي. إسرائيل مدعومة عالمياً بالمال والسلاح من مُعظم دول العالم وأقواها، ونحن لا. فيا إخواني دعونا من أوهام أن الـ”حرب” ستجدينا أي نفعاً.

يا إخواني، إسرائيل دولة لا تهتم بقتل الأبرياء، ولا تحترم الهدنة، ولا تحترم القوانين الدولية. فما هو الحل؟

إذا كنت تتبع إستراتيجية ثابتة في لُعبة ما، وكان خصمك يفوز عليك دائماً، فهل تُغير إستراتيجيتك ؟

دعونا نكون واقعيين، نحن ضعفاء وهم أقوياء. نحن لسنا أنداداً لهم عسكرياً فلماذا نستمر بهجماتنا؟ صحيح أن العمليات والـ”صواريخ” تُذعر البعض في الشارع الإسرائيلي، ولكنها تؤدي إلى قتل المئات في الشارع الفلسطيني. صحيح أن المفواضات لم تكن مجدية 100% ولكن الخيار العسكري أدى إلى منع الأكل والدواء وحتى الحج عن أهل غزة. قولوا لي ما هي فائدة هذه العمليات والـ”صواريخ” ؟ لا فائدة لها، فعندما يُذاع خبر إطلاق “صواريخ” فلسطينية على إسرائيل، يبرر العالم إستخدام إسرائيل صواريخ حقيقية للرد. إذا هذه الصواريخ لا تضر أحداً سوانا.

أعرف أن الكثير سيصيح ويطالب بالإنتقام من مجزرة اليوم، ولكن إلى ماذا سيؤدي هذا الإنتقام ؟ ألن ترد إسرائيل مجدداً وتقتل المئات منا وتجدد حصارها القاتل ؟

يا إخواني، لكل زمن ولكل عراك إستراتيجية. غاندي تمكن من هزيمة أكبر إمبراطورية في زمنه بدون اللجوء إلى السلاح لأن الهند لم تكن نداً عسكرياً لبريطانيا آنذاك. فهل سنتعلم؟

We often account for randomness or variance in our life whether we are aware of it or not. For example one might describe any of these events as random: will you wake up happy and in a good mood tomorrow? how will a piece of fruit taste when you eat it? if you flip a coin will it come up heads or tails? will you bump into somebody you know on the street today? what will your favorite blogger blog about next? and when? …etc. However randomness is not only used to talk about the future, it is also used to explain the past. For example, evolutionary steps have been explained in terms of random genetic mutations that were deemed beneficiary for survival.

We all incorporate randomness into our thinking. May be it is our way of saying “this is too complex to calculate, let’s assume it could be anything”. However, does randomness really exist ? Is there such a thing as a truly random event ? This question can be expanded into the more profound “is there any uncertainty in the future ? can we predict the future accurately ?”. Certainly, if there is no randomness in life then predicting the future is possible. Otherwise it is not because a small random event can trigger a chain of bigger events; which in Chaos theory is known as the Butterfly Effect.

So the question is, can we model things in life accurately ? For example, my outlook on life is influenced by my parents behaviors, my teachers at school, my classmates, the people i meet in the street, what i see on tv, what i read on the Internet, and how i have behaved in the past …etc. So if we built a model to include all of this, will it predict what i will do in the future ?

Let us expand this a bit. You may be feeling happy right now. You are feeling happy because the events of this day from the moment you woke up until now have resulted in you feeling happy. Actually, you are feeling happy because the events from the day you were born have resulted in you being happy at this moment. Actually, you are feeling happy because the events from the moment the universe was created have resulted in you feeling happy at this moment. This is similar for what you will feel next, eat next, think next ..etc. Think of it this way, what you wore today, and what you will have for lunch are the results of everything that ever happened in the universe up until the moment you woke up !!

If we built a model to encompass everything in existence; If we modeled everything at the sub-atomic level and up, on earth and in space, will it justify what happened in the past and what will happen in the future ? Will it model how people feel and think ? Will it model how your ancestors looked and how will your children look ? Will it model what will you do next ? what will you eat for lunch ? and how you will feel about it ? Will it model whether a coin flip will result in heads or tails ? will it predict whether you will ever come across this article ? whether you will read or not ? and at what point will you stop reading ?

The big bang theory proclaims that the universe came into existence from a point of singularity. Before the bang there was nothing. Absolute nothing. After the big bang, things started coming to existence. Not only tangible things such as planets, stars, and galaxies; but also things such as light, gravitational force, and electro-magnetic force ..etc. If you were able to model everything from that point of ‘bang’ until now, wouldn’t you know everything that ever happened in life, and everything that will ever happen ?

From a control theory point of view, life has been a feedback-based system with no external input. As far as we know, nothing after the big bang has been a result of external input from something outside the universe. This means that we can conceptually build a mathematical model to correctly simulate what happened from the point of big bang up to today and even further into the future. Isn’t that amazing ?!! You may find it trivial, but i found it truly profound.

This means that whatever you thought and did in the past, and whatever you will think and do in the future is all accounted for. I have previously struggled with understanding the principle of qada2 and qadar (القضاء والقدر) .. after all, how can you be self-determined and still have your fate and actions predicted. Now my understanding is that all of our lives are a result of a mathematical system that controlled everything from the point of inception. We may still choose to do whatever we want, but that model already accounts for what we think and how we choose and will thus choose the same thing as we did.

All of mankind’s forays into science are just uncovering small aspects of this big model that combines all of us. At this point, i don’t believe that there is anything truly random, i.e. there is nothing that given the same exact circumstances could be executed twice and result in different outcomes. I am starting to believe that whatever we assume is random is really predictable given enough time and computing resources. However, maybe i am thinking about it in the wrong way, and maybe i have been doing too much work simulating networks than i am starting to think everything can be simulated.

Anyway, here is a brain dump for you. You might have found it extremely trivial and well known. But to me it came as a profound and pleasant surprise. In any case, the next time you put on a sweater, know that the actions of the entire universe have resulted in you wearing that sweater in that day.

I think this is my personal sign that i have grown up. Restraint! The other end of the dialog was sitting there making wild inaccurate claims, patronizing me, and softly attacking me. Not once, not twice, but many times. For a solid half an hour. Two years ago i would have fired back at the first instance. But this time i remained quite. As the conversation grew longer, my internal conflict escalated: “Don’t take that! Type! Yell! Do something!” a voice inside me was shouting. But i remained quite. Let time show them the error of their ways.

I knew i had done nothing wrong. I knew it was not my mistake. The other end of the dialog was not my boss, so i did not stay quite out of fear, respect, or protocol.

I knew i could have talked back, for hours if necessary. But i also knew that discussion was futile. So i fought my inner demons and stayed quite. I showed restraint. I can not say that i am completely satisfied yet. Part of me still wants talk back. But i am generally happy with my decision: Restraint!

I woke up this morning only to find out that both my parents have created Facebook accounts . Talk about a morning surprise!

Over the years my family has been slowly coerced to becoming a high-tech wired group; after all, internet, email, palms/blackberries, and VoIP are all in use. Yes we are truly a nahfeh . I’ve gotten quite used to waking up on some days to find 7 forwarded emails from my mom in my inbox.

However, transition and adoption of new tech is rarely smooth. Things do take getting used to. I sometimes do wonder how do people who were not in contact with high tech gadgets in their teens or 20s deal with such things. After all, they grew up without seeing value for such things, and have adapted to going about their daily routine without such “interference”.

Perhaps what is even more interesting than the view of our parents and other people from their generation, is our view on things when we get in their position. We (pretty much all the readers of this blog) have all grown up in the age of computers and rapid technological jumps. So we are quite accustomed to frequently changing to new things, using new websites, new gadgets ..etc. So will we have an easier time adapting to our children’s technology in 10, 20, or 30 years ? I don’t know. I guess only time will tell. But for now, i will just go post something on my father’s wall

This all started a couple of months ago. Our little corner of the blogosphere was in its periodic slump, and i thought to spice things up. Being the mischievous kid that i am, i decided to write a little applet to break Qwaider’s famed and/or touted spam protection mechanism. (Un)fortunately, i got extremely busy immediately thereafter, and dropped the idea.

~~ Anti-Spam in Blog Engines ~~

While i no longer plan to test Qwaider’s spam system, I think the idea and discussion is still valid. Before i begin, i must state that i am not an expert in spam fighting, so i simply can’t go into the messy details of this field. However, for systems such as blog comments, one can imagine a set of techniques that are used to detect whether something is spam or not:

• Content: This is simple; if the comment contains certain flag words, or if the comment body contains multiple outbound links, then this is spam with high probability. While most systems such WP or Blogger, allow one link to be part of the comment body, some immediately send any comment with a link for moderation.
• Embedded Tags: WP and Blogger allow you a restricted set of HTML formatting tags in your comment body. But this could also be malicious if you add script tags. Again, some engines also takes the defensive strategy of stripping out all HTML tags.
• IP Address: Many systems build and/or rely on databases of IP addresses that are known to produce spam, so if your comment comes from one of these addresses, then it is marked as spam.
• DNS Checks: Many systems check whether the domain from which the comment is originating is known to be a “safe” domain and whether it matches the other IP info.
• Speed: It is unlikely that a human being will comment on 10s or 100s of blog posts within a few seconds, so if the system sees multiple comments from the same machine being issued in close periods, then that signals spam.
• Reputation: After your system ages a bit, it can assign reputation to the different addresses (clients) that communicate with it. People who frequently comment on a certain blog would gain reputation in the system for being trusted clients. Through their many submissions, the system can assign them a pool of addresses from where they are likely to send their comments. That along with their unique system identifiers (usernames, email addresses, and their internal system GUIDs) would allow the anti-spam engine to trust comments that match their IDs. This can allow the system to relax the strict rules for reputable users, and enforce them for the known bad guys.
• Manual vs. Automatic Submissions: One can quickly make a program to directly invoke the HTTP commands to submit a comment to a blog. However, legitimate users are unlikely to do that. So one can overload the comments HTML form (via the button or JS commands triggered by a keydown in the comment box) so that it flags that this comment has been typed by a human rather than sent automatically by a malicious script.
• Page Rendering Triggers: Humans will need to view the post before they can comment on it. So the server can generate a timed unique ID for a page when it is requested by a client, and require the comment forms to use that ID in sending their comments.

~~ Limitations ~~

These are probably the major techniques that many blog engines (such as Qwaider’s) use for their anti-spam engines in their blogs. Of course, isolated blog engines can not use other techniques that are used by anti-spam email engines, and even anti-spam hardware. Unfortunately in a blogging environment, you do not have a contact list to assist you in flagging emails, you can not (correctly) anticipate who will post a comment on a particular post, you can not use in-hardware checks on the actual IP messages, and you can not compute checksums on the data and such.

~~ Attack Strategy ~~

At this point, the strategy for a successful “attack” applet is simple. It has to mimic the actions of an actual community of human readers. This forces us to re-examine the goals of the applet; do we intend to overload the server and bring down the site ? do we intend to add a bunch of links to undesired sites ? or do we intend to litter the site with a  bunch of meaningless “comments” to annoy the owner and readers ? This turns out to be an important point that i’ll get back to later. However, for now, let us assume that our goal is to just litter the site with a bunch of garbage comments.

Given the goal and strategy above, the implementation is almost straight forward. One could write a small applet and link to it from a site within the community of the target blogger. For example, i could link to that applet from here since most of my readers read Qwaider’s blog as well. Once the applet is loaded on a bunch of machines, it can go in a “round-robin” fashion and each time pick an instance to deliver the spam comment. For example, if the applet was running on my machine, Hani’s, KJ’s, and Tooteh’s, at each epoch, only one of us will deliver that spam (assuming that the epochs are well spaced). Let’s say that it is my turn to deliver the spam; my applet would request a random recent post from Qwaider’s blog, and load it in an internal browser (the same kind that is used to automate web UI testing), it then grabs a random sentence from the post, simulates a user input event in the comment form, and submits a comment with that random quote from the article. These automated browsers exist for testing web UI and AJAX, and by faking the browser identification, the server can not know that it served a request to a fake browser or a real browser.

From the server’s perspective, the distributed nature of these applets insures that each spam comment is legitimately originating from a different address. The content of each message is not suspicious because it uses the same credentials of the users it is mimicking. It also simulates browser behavior so that is indistinguishable from normal activity.

~~ What is Spam ? ~~

This begs the question of whether this really is spam or not. After all, the spammers did not gain anything from their actions except the annoyance of the blog owner and readers. However, what is spam really ? If you as a blog owner are getting a flood of meaningless “comments” that are obstructing the dialog between you and your readers, then that is logically classified as spam. Notice that this does not rely on computational or statistical properties of the “spam” messages, but rather on their purpose and effect. So this means that all those automated anti-spam checks will never be able to catch all spam messages. Do “human-tests” and Captchas work ? No! because by this definition, humans could as easily manually type spam messages into comment boxes.

In the Computer Science literature, there is something known as the “Turing Test” in which a human chats on his machine with another entity. The test is passed if the human chatter can not distinguish if he is talking with a computer or another human. Currently no program can pass the Turing test. Does this mean that we will only be able to solve the spam problem completely when we finally pass the Turing test ? Actually, No! For those of us who live in areas with mail services, how many times do we get a letter in the mail and throw it out because we think it is just junk, only to discover later on that it was actually something “real” and important ? This actually happens quite often. So if even humans can not always distinguish spam correctly and accurately, then it is really impossible to solve the spam problem completely, correctly, and accurately. Then again, is there a single source that can say whether something is spam or not ? What you might consider as a spam message, i might consider as a legitimate and important messages. Take the weekly local sales flyers that you get in the mail for example. To me, that is always unsolicited junk mail. To others, that is valuable info. So truly, spam is in the eye of the beholder.

~~ So is Working on Spam Problems Hopeless ? ~~

Although we can never identify all spam correctly and accurately, there is still alot of work to be done in identifying messages that are obviously spam. That is where the crux of the anti-spam work and research is focused, and we still have a long way to go.

Anyway, these are my thoughts on this subject. I picked Qwaider as an example only because he is relatively well-known in our community, he built a good anti-spam engine, and i think he can take being picked upon

كنت أناقش هذا الموضوع مع أصدقائي قبل أيامٍ قليلة، وبعد قراءة هذه المقالة دُفعت لأترجم أرائي لكلمات على هذا الموقع.

الكل يعلم أن معظم مدننا العربية قديمة قِدَم الزمن وكلها تتسابق لمواكبة هذه الأيام الجديدة، هذا أمرٌ جميل، ولكن السؤال هو على أي حساب يحدث هذا التقدم ؟

معظم مُدُنِنا تعمل على بِناءِ مبانٍ حديثة وشوارع واسعة ومرائب جديدة وغيرها من المرافق الضرورية. هذا حسن؛ ولكن غالباً إما أن يقف هذا البناء في مكان معالم تاريخية لتلك المدن، أو أن يُنصب مكان أراضٍ مشجرة ومزارع جميلة. ليس بالضروري أن نسأل آبائنا عن “ما كان” لنلمس هذا الأثر، فالكثير منا يستطيع أن يتذكر بناء قديم جميل هُدم ليبرز مكانه إعمار جديد. ففي مدينتي رام الله، أتذكر جلياً فندق قصر الحمراء القديم ببناءه الجميل، وساحته الواسعة المُشَجَرةَ التي كنت ألعب بها وأنا صغير. أما الآن، فقدم هُدِمَ الفندق وقُطعت الأشجار، وحُفرت الأرض للتوسيع لمشروعٍ جديد لم يتم. وفي ضاحية رام الله العتيقة (رام الله التحتى) أيضاً منازل كثيرة مبنية على الطراز القديم –عُمرُ الواحد منها 100 عام تقريباً– هُدِمَ معظمها لنأتي بمنازلَ وعمارات جديدة.

هذا الأمر ليس مقتصراً على رام الله فحسب، بل نراه أيضاً في الكثير من المدن الأخرى. كنت أتصفح صوراً من أيام الشباب لأبي وأمي. فرأيت صورةً ظهر فيها جبل جرزيم في نابلس ومعظمه أخضر وجميل، وكأنه منظر من صورةٍ أوروبية. أما اليوم فجبل جرزيم معظمه أجرد بلا شجر. والحال ذاتها في جنين. حيث كان سَهلُها الخصب مزروعاً بكافة أنواع الأشجار المثمرة، وكثرة هذه الجنائن هي التي أعطت جنين إسمها، أما اليوم فترى هذا السهل تقل فيه الأشجار والمزروعات على حساب البناء العشوائي.

وبحسب ما قرأت من المدونين العرب الآخرين، فإن هذه المشكلة موجودة أيضاً في عمان وبيروت والقاهرة والكثير من المدن العربية الأخرى. أما إذا نظرنا داخل الخط الأخضر، سنجد أن الأمر على العكس تماماً. أتذكر أنني عندما كنت أزور المدن العربية داخل الخط الأخضر كنتٌ أٌذهل بتغير التضاريس. فالجبال خضراء، والطبيعة جميلة على عكسنا تماماً. وما ذهلني أكثر هو إكتشافي أن إسرائيل لديها برنامج تبرع لليهود في أنحاء العالم لـ “يزرعوا شجرة في إسرائيل“. وحتى على مستوى المعالم التاريخي، طبعاً هناك عمل على طمس الهوية العربية للبلاد بعدم الحفاظ (وأحياناً ردم) المعالم العربية، ولكن المعالم التي يريدون إبرازها يتم المحافظة عليها وترميمها وإستغلال تلك المباني الأثرية لصنع رونق خاص لتلك المنطقة.

ولكن ما سبب هذه المشكلة ؟ برأيي الأسباب واضحة؛ النمو السكاني وإنعدام الرؤية المستقبلية وشح المال وقلة التقدير للموروث الحضاري. مفهوم “الحي أبقى من الميت” سائد عندنا، وأعتقد أن الجميع يتفق أن مَن تنقصه لقمة العيش لن يأبه بموروث حضاري أو أي شيء آخر، وهذا الأمر مُتفهم. ولكن ما المشكلة في تشجيع المحافظة على رونق وروح المدينة القديمة (في البلدة العتيقة) وبناء العمار الجديد في أماكن جديدة. فعلى سبيل المثال رأيت بعض الناس يحولون منازل قديمة (ذات القبب) إلى مطاعم وجلسات هادئة، وكما دونت مسبقاً، بعض الشركات تجعل من المباني ذات الطراز القديم مقرات لها. وهناك أيضاً بعض الأفكار للسماح للناس بإقتلاع الأشجار بشرط زراعة غيرها في مكان قريب.

طبعاً كل هذه المشاريع تحتاج إلى دعم ومساندة حكومية أو جهة مالية مختصة. ولكن برأيي أنها مجدية. فإذا إستمرينا بقتل روح البلدة الأصلية، فلن يبقى لنا شيء لنفرق المدن عن بعضها البعض. فما الفائدة إذا كانت كل المدن تحتوي على نفس المباني، ونفس المولات التجارية، ونفس المرافق ؟ من الجيد أن تقدم كل المدن تلك الخدمات لسكانها، ولكن لا بد من عامل يعطي كل مدينة إنفراديتها ويحافظ على روحها، وهذا سياسعد الحركة السياحية لتلك المدن.

طراز معماري قديم في رام الله

StartUpArabia recently ran an article by guest blogger Qwaider on Trust and Arab Online Services. The article was not (and maybe not intended to be) an objective study on trust & Arabian online services, but rather a highly subjective post written by a well-known, opinionated blogger. In his article, Qwaider lists the reasons why he does not trust Arabian online services yet.

While some of his points might be valid, i respectfully disagree with most of them. Privacy and security leaks seem to be his biggest issues. However, the fact of the matter is that most Arab internet services do not collect private information about their users anyway. While Qwaider might have had search engines, email providers, and social networking sites on his mind, the fact is that most Arab sites do not require anything “real” besides an email address to log in. Questler, Ikbis, Yamli, G.ho.st, all blog aggergators,  all the Digg-like sites, and pretty much most of the online applications that you can think of fall under that rule. If providing an email address is your issue, then how is this any different than providing your email address to small internet startup anywhere in the world? Do not use the Google/Yahoo/Facebook/MySpace argument of privacy in numbers, but think of any internet startup with a still small number of users. If you can trust that startup not to share your email address, then you should be able to trust Arab startups as well. Personally, i do not trust either. I am a privacy freak. That is why i have disposable “anonymous” email addresses that are POP accessible from my real address.

So my first point is that privacy should not be a blocking factor because most sites do not even require/record any private information.

The author also argues that international companies that pump millions into their online presence offer higher quality and more reliability than those with limited budgets in the Arab world. Although huge funding helps you provide higher quality and reliability, this is not a deterministic behavior. This is as true on the international scene as it is on the local scene. Otherwise most international startups would not have succeeded in the first place –because regardless of their funding, they have less funds than big giants. For example, how did YouTube (as a startup) provide a higher quality video hosting service than Google Video (before their acquisition). Yes, more money can help you provide higher quality products, but this is not a sufficient condition. Additionally, let’s not forget the complex and sophisticated hosting platforms that ensure startups receive a highly reliable hosting platform for a relatively low-cost. Examples include Amazon EC2 and the multitude of VPS and dedicated hosting services that boast three-nines and five-nines uptime & backup. So, you do not need millions of dollars and your own hosting farms to provide a reliable service to your small user set.

Finally, regarding sustainability. You pose the question of “how would you know that the company would be there in a few months or years time”. This question is valid for any internet startup not just Arab ones. Why did people go to Facebook when it first came out instead of just sticking with MySpace ? How do some startups continue to challenge the big name companies ? Regardless of the locale, people would choose startups over big name companies if they felt that they provide a better service. After all, not all startups provide an application with a totally new concept. In fact, many startups provide applications and services that have existed before, but they provide them in a better fashion. This has been the success factor behind places like SalesForce, YouTube, Facebook, Zoho, Zimbra and many others.

I am not saying that all Arab online startups are good, or that all of them are trustworthy. I have previously stated that i believe that unfortunately many of the Arab online startups lack originality in their ideas (which in my opinion is one their main obstacles). However, i simply disagree with mass labeling Arab startups as untrustworthy. As a part-owner of an Arab startup firm with online presence, and having deep connections with a bunch of other Arab online startups, i can tell you that most people take the security and privacy of their clients very seriously, and that some have taken the measures to hide sensitive client information even from themselves. Qwaider, if you were to start an online company, wouldn’t you take these issues into concern ? I bet your answer is yes, and so is the answer of many others.

Finally, let’s not forget that big international companies like Google, Yahoo, and Facebook have had many privacy complaints. Afterall, Facebook does keep countless personal information about you, your friends, and your likes and dislikes, yet there privacy slate is not clean. Don’t forget that Facebook never deletes anything that you do on their site, and exposes your personal information to third-party applications. So, how can you trust those applications ? Similarly, Google keeps track of your search history, email, documents and many other private information, and there have been many privacy concerns voiced by people. With all of Google’s might and money, there were still some exploits that exposed people’s entire address book to hackers and such. Additionally, Google’s Image Labeler can actually construct a profile of you complete with your age, gender, interests, and even sexual orientation in just a few interactions. Privacy and trust are the big issues these days, but money and fame do not buy you neither privacy nor trust.

In preparation for commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, I was confronted with an endless stream of possible topics to blog about. I finally decided to talk about moments that  helped define me as a person, and as a Palestinian. Then I paused for a second wondering: What does it really mean to be a Palestinian ?

Sure, the inhabitants of the land of Palestine and their descendants are by definition Palestinian. But being a Palestinian also entails an identity “package” of history, culture, common knowledge, and common experiences. This shared identity package is evolving with time, and is truly hard to explain. Yet, it is what really makes Palestinians Palestinians. Being Palestinian is not just about blood and ancestry, it is about you being part of the collective Palestinian experience regardless of where you are, be you in Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Europe, America, or the moon.

So in this article, I would like to go through some snapshots of the experiences that all together form my Palestinian identity, and define me as an average Palestinian.

~~ My Grandparents ~~

My father and his family come from a village called Sobbarine (صبارين). Today, nothing remains of that village. Sobbarine used to be located on the hills near Haifa. My grandparents, and the rest of the village, used to farm their fertile land and mostly live off of what they produce. My grandfather was a very strong man; people used to talk about how he once beat a wolf with his bare hands. Around 1944, my grandparents got married, and by 1948 they had two sons and a daughter.

When the violence escalated in 1948, people in Sobbarine were terrified of the impending attack by Jewish gangs. They have heard of what happened to many other villages (such as the Massacre of Dier Yassin) and were scared for their lives.

Although some of the villagers have started fleeing, my grandfather being the tough man that he was, decided to stay with his house and land. Unlike him, my grandmother was scared for her life, and the lives of her three young children. After long discussions, my grandfather agreed to leave, and so they did.

A couple of days later, my grandmother decided to go back to her house to pick up some stuff, as there still were some people in the village. Her luck did not help her this time, and one of the Jewish gangs entered the village and started winding up young men and teenagers before she could flee.

Scared for her life, my grandmother ran and crouched inside a “taboon” (طابون) (a big clay outdoor oven traditional in Palestine) so as to hide herself from the gang. From her clay oven, my grandmother saw the gang members lining up the collected men on the edge of the hill, shooting them, then dumping their bodies into the “wad” (small valley between hills). At this point, my grandmother was certain her death is imminent.

The next day however, the gang left the village, and the few remaining terrified women left Sobbarine never to return to it again. My grandmother caught up with my grandfather who was heading inland away from the sea.

Scared to go to the populated areas, my grandparents along with other villagers camped for a few days in the woods near a village called “Um El-Fahim” (أم الفحم). Unfortunately the group did not have any food supplies with them, and edible material were very hard to come by. So the only way for those people to stay alive was to search for undigested grains in animal feces to eat. Fifty years later, my grandmother was recalling this story to me with a clear feeling of shame and indignity. She contrasted to me the dramatic life change that took place over the span of a few days. Going from living a dignified life as self-sufficient farmers, to searching for undigested grains in animal feces. Oh the inhumanity!

My grandparents settled in a city called Jenin, in what later came to be known as the West Bank. Having lost everything, they had to restart their lives from scratch.

~~ My Father ~~

Fast forward Nineteen years, my Dad was a young boy in sixth grade working in a farm in Jenin to help support his family. My dad was not as strong as my grandfather, but he was just as stubborn and twice as fearless. It was the 1967 war, and Israel was yet to capture the West Bank. On that fateful day, my father was in the field collecting tomatoes when he noticed fighter jets in the sky, and tanks rolling in on the ground. A major battle was about to take place near Jenin. Being the stubborn kid that he was, he decided to stay in the field and finish collecting those tomatoes even though all the other kids had ran away in fear.

Finally satisfied with his harvest, he went back home. But his family were nowhere to be found. They had escaped their home and took refuge in a nearby cave. My grandmother in that cave was worried sick about him, so she asked one of the older boys in that cave to go search for him one more time. Luckily, that boy found my dad and lead him to the cave. Ironically, my grandmother later recalled that she was happy that he had collected those tomatoes as their stay in that cave extended and people in the cave got to feed on them.

Fast forward another ten years. My father is now a young man in love. His fiancé (my Mom) unfortunately lives in Nablus, which is about one hour away from Jenin. I say unfortunately because at that time my father was under “city arrest”. He was not allowed to leave the city of Jenin. This was his punishment for being a “political activist”, for you see, even displaying the Palestinian flag was a punishable crime. Being the hopeless romantic that he was, he bought a gray trench coat, a tall black umbrella, and some reflective sun glasses to disguise himself and would regularly sneak from Jenin to Nablus to meet my mother and come back.

These items still exist in our household today. My dad has repeatedly tried to make me wear that coat despite my continuous complaints that I will look like an out of place 70′s character in it. I will keep these objects for their sentimental values, but I doubt I will ever wear any of them.

~~ Me ~~

After marrying my mother and finishing his doctoral studies, my dad relocated to the city of Ramallah in the West Bank to live and work. I grew up in Ramallah during the 1990′s. We lived in an apartment in a 3-story building, which used to be considered tall in Ramallah back in the very early 90′s. My earliest memories include the fresh fruits and vegetables market (the hissbeh), Israeli soldiers setting up surveillance points atop our building and the building next to us (as they usually did for tall buildings), our neighbor down the street being shot to death by IDF soldiers, and my dad getting shot in the back with a rubber bullet by the IDF –which although thankfully did not kill him, gave his back a “slipped disc”.

I might not have witnessed full-fledged Arab Israeli wars as my parents and grandparents have, but I grew up in the time of checkpoints, travel permits, and moving restrictions. You needed to obtain a special permit to go visit Jerusalem, and another (much harder) one if you wanted to visit “the inside” (Haifa, Yafa, Tel-Aviv, Nazereth ..etc). There were checkpoints at the entrances of Jerusalem and sporadically through out the West Bank, but people used to be able to get around them. However, sneaking past those checkpoints had severe consequences if caught. So I never snuck. I guess I am not as fearless as my father and grandfather were.

These movement restrictions were not just between West Bank cities, or the West Bank and Jerusalem, but they also included (and were magnified at) the West Bank’s only exit for the Palestinians, which was the Allenby/King Hussein Bridge between Jericho and Jordan across the Jordan river. Travel difficulties seemed to also follow you even outside Palestine. In airports your Palestinian Passport used to warrant you an extra search, or an extra round of questioning, or some mysterious delay during which nothing seemed to be happening.

But I didn’t know any better. I used to think that is normal. I used to think that in this day and age, it does take about a day to cross borders. My grandfather from my mother’s side was a taxi driver back in the 60′s and 70′s. He used to take people from Nablus and Jerusalem to Amman, Beruit, and Damascus. He used to say that it took him only an hour and a half to reach Amman from Nablus, and about 7 hours to reach Beruit, and 10 to reach Damascus. Geographically on the map, these numbers make sense. But to me they were astonishing. For one, I was born into a world were I could not travel to Syria or Lebanon simply because I was a Palestinian. Even then, how can you freely and easily cross borders in less than a day ?!

Today, Israel’s separation wall/barrier is placed inside the West Bank deeper than all the checkpoints used to be. Entrance to Jerusalem requires an extra special permit that is awarded to the extremely lucky. The movable checkpoints inside the West Bank turned into monstrous fixed checkpoints with what looks like human cages, and new “movable” checkpoints sprouted between the old checkpoints. Nowadays even traveling inside the West Bank by car requires a permit (which are even harder to get). Last holiday season, in order to go visit our relatives, we had to apply for two permits, and we still spent a total of 3 hours on checkpoints (even though our relatives live merely 1.5 hours away from our home in Ramallah).

These checkpoints, movement restrictions, and separation wall affect many Palestinians on a daily basis. They impede people on their way to work, to schools, to the universities. They restrict the movement of patients, and has cost thousands of Palestinians their lives because they couldn’t receive proper medication and treatment. They impede businesses in conducting their transactions. They prevent many farmers from transporting their produce to city markets. They are even forcing families to grow up in isolation as it becomes harder and harder for people to connect, and we are in this 21st century.

But this is normal, or at least that is what you get to think. Regardless of the obstacles, life has to go on. Before you know it, checkpoints just become a fact of life for you. You only appreciate how messed up things are when you go out and see how to rest of the world is functioning.

~~ Conclusion ~~

For us Palestinians, only two things have remained consistently true during the past 60 years; First, life for ordinary people only gets worse every year. Second, from the minute you are born in Palestine, you are immediately a suspect, and you are continuously treated so for as long as you live. No one in the world can condone mass punishment of civilians, but punishing suspects is not a big deal.

We must be suspects! Otherwise what explains 60 years of Israel’s direct violation of numerous UN resolutions without any consequences. We must be suspects, otherwise what explains our denial of basic human rights. For me and my family, the only crime that we are suspect of is simply existing!

These stories are not unusual for Palestinians. As a matter of fact, i come from a blissed family; My parents were able provide us with food and shelter, and none of my relatives was killed. Unfortunately however, the stories of average Palestinians are much grimmer still.

~~ What Happened to These People ~~

• My grandfather died in 1994. Until his very last day, the memories of Sobbarine stayed vivid in his mind. After his death, his will had only one request: to be buried near the cemetery’s front door so that he’ll be the first leave and go back to Sobbarine.
• My grandmother is still alive, but the last of her three children who were born in Sobbarine died this winter. She still remembers our village through their memories. Nowadays her only wish is a fistful of Sobbarine’s earth.
• My father has dedicated his life to our upbringing and to assist in enhancing the lives of other Palestinians. Despite receiving many lucrative offers to leave the country, he insists on staying and working for his people till the end.
• As for me, the future is still a blank page. I am finishing my education and preparing to follow on the footsteps of my dad dedicating my life to the well being of Palestine and the Palestinians.

**Final Note: It was really hard to pick just one Palestinian topic to write about. There were so many things that i wanted to talk about. I picked my subject, then changed it, then changed it again until i decided on this. Even with this, i didn’t know, which experiences should i have talked about. The choice was not getting any easier. How could it ?! The daily experiences of any Palestinian is enough to write encyclopedias let alone articles.

In my article i tried to talk about how three generations of our family struggled in doing very basic things just because we are Palestinians. Yet still, i am pacing around my room thinking, were these snapshots enough ? I don’t know. What do you think ? I am really interested in your opinion.

يعني مش معقول … عمرها صارت معك (أو معكي)؟

اليوم طلعت من الحمام عل المكتب. وطول الوقت وأنا بغني “طلع الزين من الحمام” وبصفق (تسحيج) وبتهزهز زي أكني في عرس القرن. صار لي ساعتين على هذه حالة. زملائي في المكتب بفكروني مجنون أو إيشي من هذا القبيل. لسة الأضرب من هيك إنو سبب الغناء إنو أخيراً قدرت أشغل قطعت الـ “سيميوليشن” (بالعنقليزي) المطلوبة مني …. آخ يعني مش هيك البئوس

هي الأغنية .. يللا سوا

طلــــع الـــزيـــن مــن الحمـــام

اللّـــــه وإســــــم اللّــــه عليـــه

ويــا بــو الحطــــه والعقـــال

اللّـــــه وإســــــم اللّــــه عليـــه

منيـــن صـــايــد هـــالغـــزال؟

ونيـــالـــك يـــابــو حطـــــه

ويــا إم التـــوب مطـــرزتيــــــه

وحطيتـــي البـــلاوي فيـــــه

وعـــن جـــوزك خبتيـــــه

ويــــوم الـــزفــــة أطلعتيــه

يـــا حـــلالـــي و يــــا مـــالــــي

طلــــع الـــزيـــن مــن الحمـــام

اللّـــــه وإســــــم اللّــــه عليـــه

…

Have you ever felt the *NEED* and the *WANT* for an adrenaline rush ? If so, what do you do satisfy that desire ? I am really interested in what you have to say.

As for me, i usually try to satisfy that by playing a contact sport, or going to a relatively empty highway and driving fast (hopefully without getting a speeding ticket). Unfortunately, due to the “nice” weather i’ve been seeing here so far, my first option is virtually impossible. On top of that, since i relocated, the only “highways” near me are one-lane streets that make their way through woods, and i *really* don’t want to risk hitting a deer (thus rendering my car virtually useless).

Argh, the only excitement i’ve been exhibiting lately is either by writing an exquisite piece of code (sad, i know), or by making some nice progress on my research. Ahhh, that could be considered pathetic. So there is some excitement, i am working on a nice little interface enhancement for blog aggregators like qwaider planet, as well as another really exciting web application. But still, an extra boost of adrenaline couldn’t hurt (at least i think so).

As a Palestinian and an Arab, I can declare this bit of non-news to you my friend:
The state of injustice in this world is indeed … depressing.

I have always witnessed bias in media (nothing new here). However, it still manages to shock me as to how biased can they manage to be. I just watched a news segment by ABC news covering Bush’s visit to the region. What shocked me the most is that at the end of the segment they casually said that rockets fired from Gaza continue to hit Israeli towns (during Bush’s visit).

That sentence ended right there, and then they moved on to another topic. No mention what so ever about what Israel has been doing in Gaza and the West Bank. Come on!! Israel still carries a military offensive operation in Gaza, and they were in Nablus for a 3-day offense just a few days ago.

I also hate the words “Palestinian Rockets”. I think these words imply something big, powerful, destructive, and fatal … you know, REAL ROCKETS, the kind that Israel uses. However, the Palestinian “rockets” are homemade, and almost always cause no casualties. Just by looking at the footage of these rocket firings, you can tell how weak they are.

Anyway, this conflict drives people insane, and unfortunately the mass media does not do its job of reporting fairly from both sides

Urrggh, i am still sleepy, so excuse me if i can’t compose coherent sentences.

الفترة الأخيرة من العام المنصرم مرت بسرعة وببطء في ذات الوقت. أعتقد أن هذا الكرتون يمثل نظرة الكثير من الناس لهذا العام الماضي وآمالهم للعام الجديد.

I was talking about how i wish i could blog as soon as ideas or events occur to me sometimes. Well this has just occurred to me just moments after writing that post.

Still at work, i had to go use the bathroom. Now they usually don’t maintain the hand soap regularly, and today was no exception. As i was exiting the stall, i noticed a guy just finishing up and drying his hands. Turning back to the sinks, i found out that there was no soap! So, i just said “Screw it!!” and headed outside to the kitchen to get some dish-washing soap … of course the guy did not know that, and i saw him staring at me … “WTF ?! i can’t believe this guy isn’t washing his after using the bathroom!!”. He was gone by the time i brought the dishes soap from the kitchen!

Now i had to fix that, so as i was passing his office on my way back to mine i pretended to be making a phone call to my friend complaining to him that i had to use the kitchen soap yet again. Unfortunately after i finished that bit, i noticed that the guy wasn’t in his office!!! So, here i am touring the office floor searching for him and pretending to be on the phone . Finally, i found him by the copy room, and i passed infront of him doing that bit again (although that wasn’t on my way to he office).

Did he buy into it?? I really doubt that … but there isn’t anything that i can do now. Eh … screw it!