Year: 2005

links for 2005-08-03

Coup d’Etat In Mauritania

Mauritania’s armed forces have set up a military council to rule the country and put an end to the “totalitarian regime” of President Maaouya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya, according to a statement on the state news agency.

The statement, signed by a so-called Military Council for Justice and Democracy, said the council would rule the country for two years.
Taya, the ex-president, was out of the country in a trip to Saudi Arabia to attend the funeral of the late Saudi King Fahd.

Earlier in the day members of Mauritania’s presidential guard took over state television and radio and blocked streets in the capital Nouackchott.
The troops, led by Colonel Mohamed Walad Abd al-Aziz, also seized army headquarters.

Dissident soldiers came close to toppling Taya in June 2003 during two days of street fighting in Nouakchott before loyalist forces regained control. The government says it foiled two more coup attempts in 2004.

[More: Al Jazeera, CNN]

Apple’s Mighty Mouse

Mighty Mouse

Apple introduced Mighty Mouse, its next generation mouse with several new innovative features, as their marketing people are claiming.

Mighty Mouse features a Scroll Ball that lets you move anywhere inside a document, without lifting a finger. And with touch-sensitive technology concealed under the seamless top shell, you get the programability of a four-button mouse in a single-button design. Click, roll, squeeze and scroll.

Anyway, some people think that the only reason these mice will be selling in millions is that they subconsciously make you want to buy them and squeeze them 😛

Mighty Mouse

looool…

Novell To Launch OpenSuse Project

Novell plans to begin opening up development of one of its Linux products to outside programmers in a project called OpenSuse, a strategy similar to that taken by rival Red Hat.

Novell is launching the project in an attempt to attract more outside developers, new users and, ultimately, market share. Novell is the No. 2 seller of Linux after Red Hat.

Novell isn’t the only one trying a more open approach. Sun Microsystems has begun opening its Solaris source code in an effort to regain the relevance the Unix version has lost to Linux.

Of course this seems like a great idea for companies because they get some R&D work done for free for them. But it’s not easy to get a plan like this going. RedHat have been trying for over 2 years with Fedora, and it’s not really going as they wish.

I think the reason why might be because open source developers actually perceive themselves as rebels against the corporate system, who wouldn’t really back a project they feel is one-sided and totally for the benefit of a certain company.
The developers think more in terms of community; something companies don’t really care about in the end of the day when their shareholders and board of directors are banging on the tables.

[More: CNet News]

Current TV

Current TV, a new TV network that will let television viewers broadcast their own videos to the world, was launched in the US yesterday.

Al Gore is an investor in Current TV, and he says that the network wants “to be the television home page for the Internet generation.”
Hmmm, always using his big catch phrases, obviously…

Gore and his fellow investors envision Current as a sounding board for young people, a step beyond traditional notions of interactivity. They want viewers to contribute much of the network’s content now that quality video equipment is widely available.

Most of its programming will be sliced into short pods, just a few minutes long, covering topics like jobs, technology, spirituality and current events from different points of view. An Internet-like on-screen progress bar will show the pod’s length.

Every half-hour, Current promises a news update using data from Google on news stories most frequently searched for on the Web.

I think this could be really cool and interesting. It should give Video Bloggers another practical venue to distribute their content and reach more people.
I’m interested in seeing how this works out.

I wish they would provide a live online video feed though for people outside the US.

State Of The Blogosphere

Technorati’s David Sifry has begun to post his quarterly “State of the Blogosphere” report (which will continue all week), wherein he sums up this quarter’s stats about blogging as derived from the Technorati data-set:

– Technorati was tracking over 14.2 Million weblogs, and over 1.3 billion links in July 2005

– The blogosphere continues to double about every 5.5 months

– A new blog is created about every second, there are over 80,000 created daily

– About 55% of all blogs are active, and that has remained a consistent statistic for at least a year

– About 13% of all blogs are updated at least weekly

I think these are very interesting numbers.
It seems that in a few years we bloggers will be taking over the world, loool…

[Source: Sifry’s Alerts]

Tunisian Blogger Meetup 5

Our friend Adib has suggested we have the next meetup in Kelibia, which I personally think would be really cool.
Also when we talked about this in the last meetup, everyone seemed excited about it.

So, here’s the idea. We can meet together in one place in Tunis, split ourselves between the available cars and then all drive to Kelibia together for a nice meetup day.

The best thing for a meetup like this would be a weekend. Either a Saturday or Sunday.

So basically we have 4 of those:
– Weekend of 6-7 August
– Weekend of 13-14 August
– Weekend of 20-21 August
– Weekend of 27-28 August

So, please leave a comment with your choice of weekend, your choice of day (Saturday or Sunday), and whether you have a car or not (If yes, how many people can you take with you?).

Blogging In Arabic

I’m very proud to announce the launch of my Arabic blog.

This is something I’ve been thinking of doing for some time now and for many reasons. Most importantly because of my love for our beautiful and rich Arabic language, the fact that there aren’t that many blogs in Arabic out there and because I think it’s important for us Arabs to blog in our language too to keep the language alive and growing.

It’s been a really long time since I wrote stuff in Arabic, so this will also be a great opportunity for me to get back to it all.

I was thinking of naming the blog something else, but then I thought I’d stick with the Subzero Blue brand, plus it turned out funny in Arabic 😛

The design is basically the same as this one, just flipped horizontally. As for the topics, they won’t necessarily be the same.

The Arabic blog is powered by the Arabized WordPress.

I hope more bloggers from across the Arab world will think seriously of blogging in Arabic too.

Oh and please let me know what you think of it.

King Fahd Of Saudi Arabia Dead

King Fahd, Saudi Arabia’s ruler since 1982, has died.
Crown Prince Abdullah was swiftly pronounced monarch.

Fahd, who was believed to be 83 and had been in poor health, had entered hospital on May 27 with acute pneumonia. A medical source said he died at around 6 a.m. local time (0300 GMT).

A Saudi official said Fahd’s funeral would take place on Tuesday to give time for foreign dignitaries to arrive.

State television said prayers for his soul would take place at the Imam Turki bin Abdullah mosque in Riyadh on Tuesday afternoon, adding that Saudis would pledge allegiance to the new king and his crown prince on Wednesday.

Ordinary Saudis said they were saddened, but not surprised, by Fahd’s death. Over the past decade, the wheelchair-bound king’s public appearances had become increasingly rare. He chaired occasional cabinet meetings but barely spoke in public.

May God rest his soul in peace…

[Source: Reuters]

Finding Neverland

a href=”http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0007CNXUK/subzeroblue-20?creative=327641&camp=14573&link_code=as1″ target=”_blank”>A couple of days ago, I finally got to watch “Finding Neverland” featuring Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet and Dustin Hoffman.

I remember really liking Peter Pan as a kid; Watching the Disney animation and the “Hook” movie time and again.
“Finding Neverland” gives us some insight into the short period of the life of Sir James Matthew Barrie, the writer, between the release of his last play and his classic masterpiece Peter Pan.

It’s fascinating to see how creative he was, and how the people around him inspired the play. It makes you realize that even though the story of Peter Pan seems simple, it is rich with symbolism and metaphors.
We also find out that he himself is more or less Peter Pan.

It’s a really nice movie; very well done, really well acted, nice soundtrack and beautiful cinematography.
Johnny Depp goes on again to prove he is one of the greatest actors around, doing a magnificent job from the acting, to the Irish accent to completely living the role.
He simply rocks…

I really liked this movie and think it’s truly worth seeing.

My score for it is: 8.5/10