random thought...

I wish Google would index my apartment, things would be much easier to find!

Smaller = Better?

Sony Vaio: All Things Microsoft
Originally uploaded by Yazan Malakha.

I must admit I’m quite impressed, although I rarely am. I got my hands on this nice next generation toy earlier this morning; actually I had it for four days but I never bothered to check it out until today.

Now I should point out that this device is designed to be a media center on the go, and although it has built in Wifi, browsing can be quite difficult given the fact the device has no built in keyboard (it has a touch-sensitive screen, with an on screen keyboard, but I found it to be cumbersome), the resolution is way too high for a 5” screen, which can bother you while reading emails/long articles.

Navigation using the built in pointing stick was quite easy, although it takes a little bit of getting used to. DivX movies played perfectly in different lighting situations. The device runs hot, so you might want to wear oven mittens while holding in.

Few things I appreciated having built in were the SD/CD card readers and the single USB port. So you’re traveling somewhere sitting at a café with Wifi, you can pop out your CF card, pop into the Vaio and upload them straight to Flickr.

What impressed me most was the form factor/size. Imagine an Intel Celeron M 900 Mhz computer with 20Gb of diskspace, 512 MB of RAM, 20 GB HD, Wifi, SD/CF Readers, 5” screen all crammed into 6”x4” frame. Impressed?

Talk about ancient

Apple Macintosh Color Classic
Originally uploaded by Yazan Malakha.

Found on one of the basement shelves

I’ll check whether it’s still in a working condition during the weekend perhaps.

Openmind: Common Sense

Computers today are just plain dumb! The Open Mind Commonsense project is an attempt to make computers smarter by making it easy and fun for people all over the world to work together to give computers the millions of pieces of ordinary knowledge that constitute "common-sense", all those aspects of the world that we all understand so well we take them for granted. This repository of knowledge will enable us to create more intelligent and sociable software, build human-like robots, and better understand the structure our own minds.

I should commend the chaps at MIT for creating an AI project that allows everyone to take part in. Log-in and it starts asking you questions, you just answer the questions and it learns what we humans refer to as common sense. Creating a huge database of general knowledge to fuel future AI engines. Fascinating and addicting way to speed us on toward Technological Singularity Participate Here

Back to Geek: XBox 360 Linux Hack?

The chaps at Microsoft (or Micro$hit as some of you prefer) have been busy securing their XBox360; which the Free60 Project aims to crack and port an open operating system to (Linux, Darwin, BSD come to mind), so far they've gathered a lot of useful and detailed information on the inner workings of the XBox360, which seems to be seured down by:

• The flash is encrypted with a per-box key
• The key is stored inside the CPU
• The boot ROM is stored inside the CPU
• Also inside the CPU is a hypervisor that verifies the running state of the kernel, making sure there is no modification (RAM checksums), else the Xbox360 panics and blows up!
• The CPU contains ROM inside of it to store the checksums
• All interrupt/exception handling is done by the hypervisor
• All code runs in kernel mode
• The emulator for first generation games can be updated via an official Microsoft download burned to CD by the user, though the CDs’ content will be encrypted and signed with public key cryptography.The boot ROM is stored inside the CPU

This will be an interesting project to watch over the next couple of months. The XBox360 will make a rather handsome tripple core server. I'm positive, impenetrable as it may seem, some rather geekish bloke will be able to circumvent this, as they did with OSx86. I'm betting apple will use the same technology to protect against Mac OS X for intel running on regular PCs [read more] On a side note, Sony will demonstrate their PS3 at CES 2006

Dagdegni Episode One

The guys are at it again... Lo, and behold ladies and gentlemen, an enthralling drive with the one of the most loved and hated aspects of the Jordanian street; a conversation with a Amman taxi driver for the audio voyeur. Listen to Dagdegni here.

I am that fool…

Yup, I am that fool tapping away his Diet-Pepsi can. Why? Because quite some time ago, back in school to be more specific. I hung out with a couple of friends whom I credit for teaching me the unwritten secrets and rules of this world. One of which was in order to prevent your carbonated beverage from exploding all over you; you must (and this is vital) tap a couple of times on the top of your Pepsi can, or risk becoming the butt of all jokes. A couple of taps, that’s all! Surprisingly this habit stuck with me all those years. But “Does it work?” you might ask. It brings me back to the age-old philosophical question “If a man says something, and no woman is there to hear him, is he still wrong?”. Similarly, if you don’t tap the cap of your Pepsi can a couple of times, will it explode all over the place? Interesting question; you can try of course. But you’d risk having to clean up the mess. It has always been safer to just tap-tap-tap and everything is hunky-dory. Come to think of it. Don’t we do things like that all the time without even knowing if they actually work, just because someone somewhere claimed they would? How about drinking a glass of water with another's palms against one's ears to cure a hiccup? How about placing a blue bead on all of your possessions to protect you from the envious hordes. How about not opening your umbrella indoors? That’s a preventive measure that I don’t think anyone can prove actually works. What about staying at home and not going to clubs, hotels, showrooms, or canceling events altogether just to stay safe? Well Whoop-Tee-Dee-Do. I just tied tapping on my Diet Pepsi can, to post-terrorism-trauma. I find it amusing how we spend our lives doing all sorts of things to protect us from all sorts of evils. Whether those evils are self detonating terrorists, spirits from beyond or a huge stream of carbonated beverage in our face. I guess I can safely conclude we’re a bunch of trusting people. And I wonder is that a problem?