I think you mean domes (qubaab in Arabic). You find them in a lot of Middle East architecture. Minarets (maazin in Arabic) are the towers attached to mosques which were classically used to call the azaan--the Muslim call to prayer. They largely have no function now as all but the most anachronistic muezzins call the prayer using a microphone and loudspeakers. I suppose the minarets are a good place to hang the loudspeakers.
This is not a troll. Or if he is, he has is head unwittingly in the right place.
There have been protests again in Tahrir for about a week. They ramped up on Friday and haven't really abated since. They also regularly happen on Fridays. The Egyptian army have been hesitant to use force again after a few recent incidents which got entirely out of hand. Here's a link to a local English translation daily on the protests this past weekend: http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/475123.
It is not unreasonable for protesters in Cairo to be concerned about this sort of thing at all. The biggest protests happened in the middle of the winter when cold is a serious issue, particularly at night. Up until the beginning of July the weather has been quite mild, but just this week we have had two 40+C days. Yesterday was still stifling at 38C. Today is a breath of fresh air (sort of) at 32C, but it is always about 4-6 degrees hotter downtown, even with the river right there. It can be terribly dangerous. It's easy to get dehydrated or to develop heat/sun stroke rapidly without realizing it.
I am at the American University in Cairo and the IT department here neither uses or supports any Linux. There is a general suspicion in the wider computing community in Egypt that you must pay for something, particularly software, for it to be any good. So, everyone just pirates copies of Windows and then steals closed/proprietary software from each other.
Brilliant situation.
This would appear to be happening too soon for them to replace X. Crome will likely just have a branded UI running over X just like with Linpus or Mint. That is, unless this has been in the works for a long time and they are now only telling us about it. Possible, but not likely.
True enough. I sometimes accidentally read comments elsewhere and think "What the #*$% is wrong with these people?"/.ers can at least sort of spell and use complete sentences. This indicates that any/. offspring might have a chance at being a bit better spoken than their peers if not actually more intelligent.
I have been doing something like this for a few years now with an NSLU2 loaded with Debian. NFS shares between systems when I am at home. Rsync mirrors the 1TB disk on the server. I have recently been using Back-in-time to keep incremental snapshots. I will upgrade to the OpenRD-Client when we manage to get Debian sorted out fully on the SOC that it uses (which is the same as the SheevaPlug).
It isn't exactly the sort of solution the asker in TFA is seeking, but it could be applied similarly to meet his needs.
Yes, Openmoko is the obvious choice. Unfortunately, the project died because everyone complained about silly aspects. Whether or not it worked as a phone was immaterial. It could do all sorts of things AND it would also work as a phone (if not fully at present, then in the future).
Ah well.
The caretaker of my building in Cairo directs the water that condenses in all of the air-conditioner units in the building into the gardens. While it isn't energy efficient AT ALL, I am always surprised by how much water gets to the garden. And as the weather gets hotter, the residents use their air-con more meaning more water for the garden. Again, it's not energy efficient in any way, but it does save water by reclaiming it from the air, and quite a lot of it.
Ditto on this. Do what you mentioned above but include a Rick Roll as the apocalyptic catalyst. Just be careful to weigh whether or not it will actually be an apocalyptic catalyst.
Does it seem strange to anyone else that the UK should on one hand wish to make broadband internet ubiquitous, while on the other hand wish to monitor internet traffic so closely?
...does it run Linux?
It is only a matter of time before someone (with a shitload of money) starts porting Debian. Could make for some interesting driving.
Seriously though, what do you do when this thing won't boot? Makes for some interesting driving.
The reality here is that the riots were partially the result of a movement that developed on Facebook and this is what concerns the government. Egypt is a weak state because the government does not operate with the permission or blessing of the people, is corrupt at ALL levels, and does not provide basic social services. This has caused a great deal of civil unrest here, which is always looking for a way to vent.
In the case of the "food riots" this spring, there was one riots, in an industrial city in the delta, which grew out of a protest/strike by workers there who had been refuse a raise in their salary allowances (salaries are fixed and this is compensated for by way of "allowances" for food and other expenses). A general strike was called for across the country via this movement online, but nothing happened. Since then the government here has increased its surveillance of both local and foreign residents in their use of communications technologies (ie- Apple disabling GPS in Egypt).
What I meant is that the parent's response to the article is pat and static, meaning that it is a foregone conclusion applied to whatever information is presented about "Muslims" or "Arabs" or "the Middle East."
What I mean by "orientalist", specifically, is the theoretical school which developed in the UK and Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The literature produced on the Middle-East and Islam during this period is marked by racist undertones and typically served to support the interests of colonial powers attempting to subjugate the validity of local populations in order to extract resources. For a living, modern-day example of an orientalist, check out Bernard Lewis. For the celebrated discussion of orientalism read Edward Said's Orientalism.
The problem that I was attempting to point out, that I missed my mark on, is that the parent commenter either didn't read the article, or didn't understand what he was looking at. In the case of these kids in Egypt using Facebook for collective action organization, they are not doing this under the guise of the Muslim Brotherhood or any other Muslim group. They are not attempting to advance an "Islamic agenda." They are responding to systematic disenfranchisement on the part of their government, which is very much a reality. If you note in the article, the Brotherhood is mentioned, but in the context that they are not involved, and that there is dissent in the ranks: younger members are using the internet as a way of being harshly critical of organization leadership, viewing them as too extreme.
What this 6th April group found is that even though they could collectivize online, that collective action doesn't translate very well into the real world, where police are involved. The arrests and torture that followed demonstrate this well, but they also (mostly) knew that this would be the response of the Egyptian government.
As for the foundation of the Muslim brotherhood, their aim is not to promote "sharia law," unless you define what you mean by that. "Sharia" is a set of normative principles taken from the Qur'an and the Sunna (reported traditions of the Prophet), which are utilized in generating both legal jurisprudence and behavioral guidelines for Muslims. It is not a law code, no matter how the term has been bandied about by various media talking-heads. The Brotherhood, and many before and after them, attempted to establish a pseudo-modernist revival of an idealized Islamic system which never existed. "Islamic law" can mean a hundred different things. In the case of the Brotherhood, it meant a ultra-conservative retrograde legal system which was inapplicable in the 20th century. This agenda also grew from unrest caused by the systematic disenfranchisement of the local population in Egypt under British colonial authority.
The Brotherhood is still going strong in Egypt, but they have had to alter their agenda hugely in order to maintain any kind of existence, since the party is illegal in Egypt. What the organization that grew out of the Brotherhood does now is act to fill the gaps between what is provided by the government and what is withheld from civil society. In other words, they are using their considerable influence now to perform social services. The "militant" faction of the Brotherhood in Egypt is totally neutered. They have only bark left, no bite. This is not the case in other places, like with Hamas (which was a sister organization based on the same philosophy as the Brotherhood set up by Brotherhood members in Palestine), they perform social services as well, but their militant faction still holds a great deal of influence over the party.
The difference between the unrest that existed in Egypt during the early part of the last century and of the present is that the power that was seen as oppressive then was foreign, and their rhetoric was typically anti-Islamic, so it was easy to garner support for an "Islamic" movement. The Brotherhood was founded because the new leadership in Egypt was
I am not sure how this got modded "insightful." This is basic orientalist rhetoric with a particularly nasty twist. These sort of baseless comparisons from the point of view of a bigoted lack of understanding don't do anything except breed more ignorance and bigotry.
RTFA! Your comment has nothing to do with what is happening here. There are people working to advocate for basic human rights. These are not radical groups, these are not Islamists. The Islamists in this country are too busy fight amongst themselves to be truly effective in Egypt. There is nothing about "the Middle East" in the article either.
It is country-specific to Egypt, which is different than other countries in the region, each of which have a different system of governance which is corrupt in different ways and governs in different ways. In the case of Egypt, basic rights are included in the constitution and then undermined by the governmental practices allowed under the "Emergency Law" enacted at the time of Anwar Sadat's assassination.
These groups, many secular, all liberal, are working toward adherence to the guidelines set forth by the constitution rather than allowing the government to continue to operate as a corrupt and broken system made up of bureaucrats lining their pockets with foreign money while the people whom that money was intended to help starve to death and the people trying to help them are imprisoned for social activism.
Slashdot Mirror
Whoopsie daisy.
Is /, better than /.?
I think you mean domes (qubaab in Arabic). You find them in a lot of Middle East architecture. Minarets (maazin in Arabic) are the towers attached to mosques which were classically used to call the azaan--the Muslim call to prayer. They largely have no function now as all but the most anachronistic muezzins call the prayer using a microphone and loudspeakers. I suppose the minarets are a good place to hang the loudspeakers.
This is not a troll. Or if he is, he has is head unwittingly in the right place.
There have been protests again in Tahrir for about a week. They ramped up on Friday and haven't really abated since. They also regularly happen on Fridays. The Egyptian army have been hesitant to use force again after a few recent incidents which got entirely out of hand. Here's a link to a local English translation daily on the protests this past weekend: http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/475123.
It is not unreasonable for protesters in Cairo to be concerned about this sort of thing at all. The biggest protests happened in the middle of the winter when cold is a serious issue, particularly at night. Up until the beginning of July the weather has been quite mild, but just this week we have had two 40+C days. Yesterday was still stifling at 38C. Today is a breath of fresh air (sort of) at 32C, but it is always about 4-6 degrees hotter downtown, even with the river right there. It can be terribly dangerous. It's easy to get dehydrated or to develop heat/sun stroke rapidly without realizing it.
will the armed robot drones run Linux?
I am at the American University in Cairo and the IT department here neither uses or supports any Linux. There is a general suspicion in the wider computing community in Egypt that you must pay for something, particularly software, for it to be any good. So, everyone just pirates copies of Windows and then steals closed/proprietary software from each other. Brilliant situation.
Also, knowing where the fuck you are is pretty cheap as well.
Yes. A plan that you are then locked into. Perfect...
This would appear to be happening too soon for them to replace X. Crome will likely just have a branded UI running over X just like with Linpus or Mint. That is, unless this has been in the works for a long time and they are now only telling us about it. Possible, but not likely.
True enough. I sometimes accidentally read comments elsewhere and think "What the #*$% is wrong with these people?" /.ers can at least sort of spell and use complete sentences. This indicates that any /. offspring might have a chance at being a bit better spoken than their peers if not actually more intelligent.
Yah, that would be a nice place to start wouldn't it?
a WoW Undeground?
I have been doing something like this for a few years now with an NSLU2 loaded with Debian. NFS shares between systems when I am at home. Rsync mirrors the 1TB disk on the server. I have recently been using Back-in-time to keep incremental snapshots. I will upgrade to the OpenRD-Client when we manage to get Debian sorted out fully on the SOC that it uses (which is the same as the SheevaPlug).
It isn't exactly the sort of solution the asker in TFA is seeking, but it could be applied similarly to meet his needs.
Do you really think that the Iranian revolution in 1979 was bloodless?
Yes, Openmoko is the obvious choice. Unfortunately, the project died because everyone complained about silly aspects. Whether or not it worked as a phone was immaterial. It could do all sorts of things AND it would also work as a phone (if not fully at present, then in the future). Ah well.
...of water in the desert air, apparently.
The caretaker of my building in Cairo directs the water that condenses in all of the air-conditioner units in the building into the gardens. While it isn't energy efficient AT ALL, I am always surprised by how much water gets to the garden. And as the weather gets hotter, the residents use their air-con more meaning more water for the garden. Again, it's not energy efficient in any way, but it does save water by reclaiming it from the air, and quite a lot of it.
Yeah, but who cares about the space elevator when we have the above new idea for the wooden badger?
Ditto on this. Do what you mentioned above but include a Rick Roll as the apocalyptic catalyst. Just be careful to weigh whether or not it will actually be an apocalyptic catalyst.
These little guys would be totally fucked in Cairo.
Does it seem strange to anyone else that the UK should on one hand wish to make broadband internet ubiquitous, while on the other hand wish to monitor internet traffic so closely?
...does it run Linux? It is only a matter of time before someone (with a shitload of money) starts porting Debian. Could make for some interesting driving. Seriously though, what do you do when this thing won't boot? Makes for some interesting driving.
The reality here is that the riots were partially the result of a movement that developed on Facebook and this is what concerns the government. Egypt is a weak state because the government does not operate with the permission or blessing of the people, is corrupt at ALL levels, and does not provide basic social services. This has caused a great deal of civil unrest here, which is always looking for a way to vent.
In the case of the "food riots" this spring, there was one riots, in an industrial city in the delta, which grew out of a protest/strike by workers there who had been refuse a raise in their salary allowances (salaries are fixed and this is compensated for by way of "allowances" for food and other expenses). A general strike was called for across the country via this movement online, but nothing happened. Since then the government here has increased its surveillance of both local and foreign residents in their use of communications technologies (ie- Apple disabling GPS in Egypt).
What I meant is that the parent's response to the article is pat and static, meaning that it is a foregone conclusion applied to whatever information is presented about "Muslims" or "Arabs" or "the Middle East."
What I mean by "orientalist", specifically, is the theoretical school which developed in the UK and Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The literature produced on the Middle-East and Islam during this period is marked by racist undertones and typically served to support the interests of colonial powers attempting to subjugate the validity of local populations in order to extract resources. For a living, modern-day example of an orientalist, check out Bernard Lewis. For the celebrated discussion of orientalism read Edward Said's Orientalism.
The problem that I was attempting to point out, that I missed my mark on, is that the parent commenter either didn't read the article, or didn't understand what he was looking at. In the case of these kids in Egypt using Facebook for collective action organization, they are not doing this under the guise of the Muslim Brotherhood or any other Muslim group. They are not attempting to advance an "Islamic agenda." They are responding to systematic disenfranchisement on the part of their government, which is very much a reality. If you note in the article, the Brotherhood is mentioned, but in the context that they are not involved, and that there is dissent in the ranks: younger members are using the internet as a way of being harshly critical of organization leadership, viewing them as too extreme.
What this 6th April group found is that even though they could collectivize online, that collective action doesn't translate very well into the real world, where police are involved. The arrests and torture that followed demonstrate this well, but they also (mostly) knew that this would be the response of the Egyptian government.
As for the foundation of the Muslim brotherhood, their aim is not to promote "sharia law," unless you define what you mean by that. "Sharia" is a set of normative principles taken from the Qur'an and the Sunna (reported traditions of the Prophet), which are utilized in generating both legal jurisprudence and behavioral guidelines for Muslims. It is not a law code, no matter how the term has been bandied about by various media talking-heads. The Brotherhood, and many before and after them, attempted to establish a pseudo-modernist revival of an idealized Islamic system which never existed. "Islamic law" can mean a hundred different things. In the case of the Brotherhood, it meant a ultra-conservative retrograde legal system which was inapplicable in the 20th century. This agenda also grew from unrest caused by the systematic disenfranchisement of the local population in Egypt under British colonial authority.
The Brotherhood is still going strong in Egypt, but they have had to alter their agenda hugely in order to maintain any kind of existence, since the party is illegal in Egypt. What the organization that grew out of the Brotherhood does now is act to fill the gaps between what is provided by the government and what is withheld from civil society. In other words, they are using their considerable influence now to perform social services. The "militant" faction of the Brotherhood in Egypt is totally neutered. They have only bark left, no bite. This is not the case in other places, like with Hamas (which was a sister organization based on the same philosophy as the Brotherhood set up by Brotherhood members in Palestine), they perform social services as well, but their militant faction still holds a great deal of influence over the party.
The difference between the unrest that existed in Egypt during the early part of the last century and of the present is that the power that was seen as oppressive then was foreign, and their rhetoric was typically anti-Islamic, so it was easy to garner support for an "Islamic" movement. The Brotherhood was founded because the new leadership in Egypt was
Mod parent "flamebait."
I am not sure how this got modded "insightful." This is basic orientalist rhetoric with a particularly nasty twist. These sort of baseless comparisons from the point of view of a bigoted lack of understanding don't do anything except breed more ignorance and bigotry.
RTFA would help, as well as reading some history.
RTFA! Your comment has nothing to do with what is happening here. There are people working to advocate for basic human rights. These are not radical groups, these are not Islamists. The Islamists in this country are too busy fight amongst themselves to be truly effective in Egypt. There is nothing about "the Middle East" in the article either.
It is country-specific to Egypt, which is different than other countries in the region, each of which have a different system of governance which is corrupt in different ways and governs in different ways. In the case of Egypt, basic rights are included in the constitution and then undermined by the governmental practices allowed under the "Emergency Law" enacted at the time of Anwar Sadat's assassination.
These groups, many secular, all liberal, are working toward adherence to the guidelines set forth by the constitution rather than allowing the government to continue to operate as a corrupt and broken system made up of bureaucrats lining their pockets with foreign money while the people whom that money was intended to help starve to death and the people trying to help them are imprisoned for social activism.