Mr. Aziz

Join NASA to the Moon

NASA has been accepting participants to join them on their Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft which is part of their exploration program to return humans to the moon by 2020. The program, scheduled to launch later next year, will map the lunar surface in extraordinary details and help future human missions. They have invited the public to participate since May 1, 2008 and the deadline for participating is June 27, 2008.

They have announced that they have broken the 1 million record on their news, and as of today they broke the 1.5 million record since my certificate of participation holds the number 1,556,580. The names will be held in a microchip and will travel to the moon on the LRO spacecraft.

For more information on LRO, go here.

To participate and add your name to the list, go here.

Posted in General, Interesting | No Comments »

Insane Speed

Ok I have done that speed in a car but this is just insane! Notice how he answers the phone at the end.

Posted in Autos, Ferrari | 2 Comments »

Future Media Architects, Inc. v. Deutsche Lufthansa AG

Future Media Architects, Inc. (FMA) has recently filed a lawsuit in federal court against Deutsche Lufthansa in response to Lufthansa’s UDRP case against FMA claiming the rights for the domain name LH.com.

Lufthansa’s UDRP case against FMA was almost guaranteed to be on FMA’s side for a couple of factors including the domain name’s nature consisting of two characters which makes it almost impossible for anyone to claim its ownership, basically because LH is an abbreviation for so many words. Another factor is Lufthansa’s actual name which is Deutsche Lufthansa, if they wanted to get a short domain name they should have gone for DL.com instead. FMA lost the case with a weird decision made by the three panelists, on the other hand one of the panelists, Mr. David E. Sorkin, realized Lufthansa did not have the rights to claim its ownership of the domain name and therefore dissented (read the UDRP case at the very end).

The current federal court filed by FMA has a lot of interesting information, FMA (represented by Kenyon & Kenyon LLP) pointed out a very serious issue on Lufthansa’s trademark; Lufthansa in their trademark state that they were founded in 1926, while it is true that Lufthansa was founded back then, however it is not the same Lufthansa we know today. Lufthansa was refounded in 1954 (Source #1, #2) and it is completely different than the old Lufthansa that was founded in 1926. Therefore, their trademark is based on false information and that is going to cause a lot of mess regarding its validity. FMA also demands the UDRP decision to be reversed and to obtain their rights for the domain name back.

Another interesting part about this case is Kenyon & Kenyon themselves, they are one of the oldest law firms in the world, they were founded in 1879 and represented people we only read about, people like Thomas Edison. More information on them here.

Posted in Domains | No Comments »

Zain Please!

Zain is one of the Kuwaiti companies that I respect for the progress they have made in the mobile telecommunications industry, they are expanding fast and managing so many networks around different countries. So far so good, now a company like Zain with a decent mobile network is presented with a huge responsibility to provide decent and reliable services, which I can say they are mobile-wise.

It’s no secret that the whole world revolves around the Internet at this time and a company without an Internet presence is going to defeated by competitors and lose a significant amount of clients. Zain have developed a nice website for each country they operate it including it’s HQ country Kuwait, the functionality of the website is quite nice but not that straight forward, if you have never visited the website in the past you will never know what’s the difference between eeZee Fast and eeZee Cards until you check out each one independently, not a hard job to do but the whole point of having a website is to serve the company’s clients in the most efficient and easiest way and to provide services with the shortest amount of clicks, as opposed to check each one of them out and find out what it does. Overall, the site is nicely done and you will pretty much find the service you’re looking for.

It does appear that I’m coming to something negative right? Well yeah, I am. If your company’s net profit is $1.13 billion dollars I think spending %0.00001 of them on your online services to ensure their reliability is essential. Zain’s website is either having Network Problems or will just load the first page which should redirect you to their main page but it never does, it will keep asking you to wait until you run out of your patience, and sometimes when it does redirect you it is unbelievably slow, to the point that I close the window and forget about it.

I’m not doubting Zain’s success but their online presence is one of the factors taken into consideration when measuring their success and from my experience with their website, it is disappointing me. Zain may have a successful board of directors but definitely an unsuccessful IT department. Guys, please fix it, it’s really bad specially when we are talking about a Global company which should take in mind their moves and work is under the radar globally.

Posted in Kuwait, Websites | 1 Comment »

CBS Acquires CNet

CBS Broadcasting Inc. (CBS) is planning to acquire CNET Networks, Inc. for $11.50 a share, totalling $1.8 billion dollars. The deal should close somewhere in July.

If I were CNet, I would be slapping myself non-stop with such an offer, specially with CNet’s net income of less than $8 million a year, which makes the offer looks very generous and overpriced. Unless CBS is planning to do magic with CNet, they are going to cover their acquisition costs in around 19 years, I’m pretty sure shareholders won’t be happy with that. On the other hand, CNet owns some of the best domain names out there, including download.com, upload.com, news.com, search.com, com.com, tv.com, radio.com, mp3.com, chat.com, computers.com, help.com and shopper.com. These names are definitely going to add value to CBS since it’s one of the largest television and radio networks in the United States, but whether they are worth that much or not is the issue. Personally, I still think it’s overpriced.

Posted in Domains, Tech, Websites | No Comments »

In Love With G5

Each time I buy a new mouse, it either falls apart in a few months or it’s just not what I’m looking for. I play Counter-Strike: Source and for that particular game you need a really good mouse, otherwise you can just watch them play since you’re going to die every round.

I have tried Logitech MX1000 which handles good with my giant gorilla hands but after around 6 months of extensive use it started to die, for every 4 left-clicks only 1 or 2 get through. Now that was really bad since left-click is exactly what I need for CSS. Gamers have always told me to get a wired mouse, but I ignored it since I didn’t really think it would make much difference - well, nothing you can sense anyway. So after Logitech MX1000 I decided to go for Creative Fatal1ty 1010 Mouse, now that was a relatively good mouse, not the greatest but it was good enough for me, and it’s wired too. However, MX1000 handle was much better for me personally, it handled way better and even though Fatal1ty 1010 lets you control it’s weight - you can add and remove them, it was still bad handling-wise. Eventually, the same MX1000 problem happened, left-click started to die. I thought I should go back to MX1000 and that’s what I did, when I got the new one it felt like I made the right choice. MX1000 isn’t really bad but it isn’t a gaming mouse at all, left and right clicks need a little pressure while when you are in a game sometimes you just touch them (without trying to break your mouse), and the other thing was it’s wireless. Unfortunately, the new MX1000 died again a few months later.

Having enough with mice dieing and having to buy a new one every 3 to 6 months, I decided to ask around and see what’s the best mouse around for gaming. After reading some reviews and asking a couple of friends, I decided I know what I’m going to get next. It’s Logitech G5, now that is one good mouse. I didn’t really have high expectations when I first bought it, but once I plugged it in, I just knew that’s the mouse I was looking for since ever. It’s wired, it has a weight caddy which has 16 weight slots, 8 of them are 4.5g and the other 8 are 1.7g. It handles really good, I haven’t played CSS that good for a long, long time. Now I’m not sure if this is going to die just like the previous ones, and even though I’d really appreciate it if it doesn’t, I would definitely go for a second one. If the second fails me too, then that’s another story. Actually, it might be my own hands killing the mice, I don’t know. All I know, Logitech G5 rocks and if you’re a hardcore gamer, you should go for it.

Posted in Personal, Reviews, Tech | No Comments »

Entourage

Just started watching Entourage yesterday, already got to season 2. It’s not that new, it started in 2004, but I never heard of it until recently, a friend recommended it and it turned out to be pretty amazing!

The show is about movie star Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) and his friends living in Hollywood, California getting new movies offers, reading scripts and doing them. A lot of celebrities showed up in this series including Jessica Alba, Ali Larter and Scarlett Johansson. Here is a complete list from wikipedia.

What I like about this series is the episodes aren’t that long and you can enjoy them one after another. I have started watching it last night and I’m already in the second season and at that rate, I will be watching the third season tomorrow. If you’re looking for something new to watch, go for Entourage.

Posted in Reviews, Shows | No Comments »

Hurricane Kuwait

Just a few minutes ago we were having a mini-hurricane in Kuwait. I was just ready to go out when I heard things falling on the roof and very strong wind outside. Our garages were crooked and one of the neighbours had something he had on his roof fallen down on the street to hit another neighbour’s car. Also our satellites apparently moved.

Now the interesting part is, the cars are stuck in the garages and will remain there until they come and fix them. Anyway, Everything seems back to normal right now. Welcome to Kuwait!

——

Just found out this, according to Yahoo! News one man was drowned in the sea and several others were injured.

Posted in Interesting, Kuwait, Personal | 1 Comment »

Post Spam

I don’t know whats wrong with WordPress but I have been getting tons of spam links, and unlike all the other wordpress bloggers who get spam in their comments, they are in my post itself!

It’s only appearing in the most recent post, so basically this post is going to get spammed as long as it stays on the top of the blog. Fortunately, all the spam links don’t appear even though the post is modified and injected with them, and for some reason the comments and pingbacks are turned off once the spam is there. Now I have been searching all over the Internet and WordPress Forums but I haven’t got any solution yet. No body has addressed this problem anywhere. Only one user at the forum replied and told me he had the same problem with no solution. I have tried manually editing the post, I removed all the spam and turned comments and pingbacks back on, a few hours later, same thing happened.

The way I see it, it’s a vulnerability in WordPress and even though I upgraded to the latest 2.3.3 version, it’s still there.

UPDATE: Problem fixed. Apparently my ‘admin’ account’s password was leaked (exploited?) and the spam kept coming since an admin can technically edit/do anything. I have no idea how they figured the password - it’s impossible to guess I promise. Anyway, password changed and just to feel better, I upgraded to Wordpress 2.5.

Posted in Personal, Websites | 2 Comments »

Google Ad Manager

Google has recently acquired online advertising giant DoubleClick for $3.1 billion dollars in cash. Google already has its AdSense which is generating them millions or even billions. So why the sudden interest on DoubleClick when they already have a similar product? And it wasn’t really a cheap acquisition.

DoubleClick is one of the top online advertising companies, and they have many connections in the industry with the leading corporates managing their advertisement networks. Also, having a variety of advertising solutions which worked really well and way better than the simple AdSense ads. Redoing all this work and establishing all these connections does come at a price tag: $3.1 billion dollars.

Closing the deal took sometime as competitors including Microsoft and Yahoo demanded more examination on the deal. Microsoft claimed that this acquisition would kill the competition in the online advertisement industry and will increase Google’s opportunities to collect personal information from online users. Microsoft, known for it’s similar role in the software industry, had a really weak argument in there and eventually the FTC approved Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick. The commission’s majority wrote in a sentence:

“After carefully reviewing the evidence, we have concluded that Google’s proposed acquisition of DoubleClick is unlikely to substantially lessen competition.”

Just after 2 weeks of taking over, Google relaunched DoubleClick in a new suit: Google Ad Manager, a smart move compared to their earlier acquisition of JotSpot; they needed 16 months to relaunch it, which I see as a waste of time and money.

Posted in Google, Tech | No Comments »