I am from the UAE. What the Saudi Government plans to do does not appears to be because they want to protect mobile operators revenues. It is rather because these two applications are quite popular among the Saudis and are difficult to monitor (unlike, say, Twitter). I have seen quite a few messages about corruption in the country being first spread through such applications.
As to those posters who immediately link this to Islam. Grow up please. This is just a dirty old patriarchy and such censorship has nothing to do with the religion.
Just a slight correction; I did not say the telecoms were "the" source of Fed income, but "a" source. I believe they contribute around 6% of Fed budget. Not that big a chunk, although nothing to sneeze at. As to the rest of your statement, lets just say that I respect your view and that we agree to differ.
Keep in mind that both Etisalat and Du give a large part of their profit to the Federal Government (who is a majority owner of both), so authorities have an interest in disallowing access to tools that may reduce their profit from phone companies. I am not saying that this is right or wrong. It is just a way to raise cash for the Federal Government which does not have many sources of income (oil income goes to the Emirates that own the oil fields, not to the Federal Government)
So what if UAE is trying to protect its youngsters from easily seeing smut content! I know some guys in the agency that controls web access in the UAE. They know about pirate pay, emule and all the other ways a moderately savvy adult can use to access "unsavory" content. Their logic is that "as long as it is not easy for kids to access that kind of content, we are doing our jobs". I am extremely OK with this.
Stop trying to impose your moral code on the rest of the world. The mature thing to do is to try to see thing from their perspective, not yours.
FWIW, Saudi Arabia, UAE and India were all asking RIM for the same level of access to the underlying network that RIM already gave to USA and UK (and probably others).
I am a local of UAE. Regardless of whether I agree with this or not, it should be noted in fairness that UAE's Government is asking RIM for access to the underlying data network similar to what RIM has already given the US and the UK Governments.
According to Al Jazeera, their reason is that the Americans are using cellular footprints to track and attach them at night (?).
As other posters stated, mobile phones are the sole communication tool there.. and Taliban are among the users. They must have a military reason to try to enforce this demand.
Did you really live in the UAE? Your "facts" do not make me think so!
Fist, car plate numbers:
Car plates number are prestige symbols here (the smaller the number, the better).
They are auctioned off to the highest bidders.
As for the rest of your message, I am not going to waste my time refuting
each and every point (there are private newspapers and TV channels
BTW).
For those interested, UAE is a federation of 7 Emirates (provinces). The largest
of which is Abu Dhabi. All the 7 are ruled by dynasties. The governance of the
country is voted among those dynasties.
We have been, so far, lucky to have good people ruling those dynasties. This
is why you do not hear much about Democracy. Poeple are living quite well and
they see no need change what has been working for the last few decades. This
might change in the future once we get a bad apple in those dynasties.
During the last few years, the UAE's government, and Dubai government in particular was trying to diversify away from oil. There are some quite huge projects currently underway, with a focus on attracting tourism and business. They have been successful so far, with the country seeing more than 10 million tourists per year, along with most of the multin-nationals using UAE for their regional HQ.
I am from the UAE. This (if true) is not a method to get cash and the government is definately not strapped for cash. We have some crazy drivers here.. and if this prove a successful way to control those idiots, then I can put up with such a system..
Re:Chess, Islam, and Arab governments
on
Hydra vs. Shredder
·
· Score: 1
Not that I know of..
This probably needs some explaining. As you may know, in Islam we are required to pray five times a day. So, with an addictive game like Chess, some people started to "forgot" about some prayers. This led some scholars to condemn Chess itself on the basis that "anything that leads to a bad act is bad".
As for saying that Chess is "Haram" (forbidden), the forbidden things in Islam are well known and most of them are mentioned in Quran. No one can say at a whim that some other thing is Haram..
Re:Chess, Islam, and Arab governments
on
Hydra vs. Shredder
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I am Muslim, Arab.. and from Dubai, too (:
Islam does not forbid Chess. If Sistani does not like it, that is his problem. The confusion here stems from the medival era when many people in the Islamic/Arab world were so smitten by Chess that some scholars felt that it was a huge waste of time and said it was "Makrooh" (undesirable). I am not aware of any respected scholar who said it is Haraam (forbidden).
Hi,
Actually there is scientific evidence that Quran was not changed since it ws revealed to the Prophit. There are still scripts available in many muesems that were written on cheap skins and bones that date back to the time of the prophet (PBUH).
As for the language, you are absolutely correct in saying that Arabic has changed since the time of the Prophet. However, this change is more in the nature of dialects. No one speaks standard Arabic (the language used by Quran) anymore in everyday life.. although it is still the language used in writing, TV news, etc.. and it is rare the native Arab who cannot understand most of it. Heck, we still read poems made by poets who predate Quran and still (unless those poets were loonies who insist in using little useed words even at that time).. still understand what they were talking about (mostly girls (:).
That was not my point actualy. Any person who speaks good English can make up 10 sentences that replicate the style of Shakespeare. No one has ever made such 10 sentences that replicate the style of Quran. Our best poets over the centuries have tried it, but no one came even close. It is not that the Language used by Quran is different from standard Arabic. It is just a matter of otherwordly style.
From a logical perspective, I agree with what you say. However, for us Muslims, it is impossible to dispute that Quran is the word of God (and therefor, the existence of God) because of a simple fact:
Quran was written in a syle of elegance that is simply miraculous, the same style is consistent across the whole Quran. No one was ever able to create even 10 sentences that approach Quranic style and elegance despite 14 centuries of trying.
Back to subject, we Muslims believe in Jesus and Muses, and believe in their books. However, we do not believe these books are authentic anymore because various Pops and kings have changes these scripts over the centuries to suit their needs.
I have installed Opera on my USB memory stick. Now I can just launch it in my office, home, an internet cafe.. and even when I am not connected to the internet, and it will open with all the pages I have last viewed the exact way I have had them before removing the USB stick.
This is possible because Opera has two great features:
1. On Windows at least (I have no idea about the Linux version), it installs cleanly to a directory. There are no hard coded registry keys or such. Everything is under the installation directory.
2. It has a great crash recovery feature. If a PC (or just Opera) crashes for whatever reason, I just relaunch it and it will get me back to exactly where I was before the crash, and all the pages will load from the up-to-the-minute cache.
If you want to do the same, here is the trick:
1. Install Opera to a directory in your USB memory stick, ie, K:\Opera
2. Configure all that you want.
3. That is it. Now, the only thing that is hard coded in the installation is the drive letter (K in the example above), so when you go to the other machine, just issue the DOS command "SUBST G: K:\".
This will give you a new drive named K: pointing to the actual USB drive, which is G: in the example.
Now I have my favorite browser, my links, and the web papges I was reading last all in my key ring. Can't say I can do this with any other browser.
I have installed Opera on my USB memory stick. Now I can just launch it in my office, home, an internet cafe.. and even when I am not connected to the internet, and it will open with all the pages I have last viewed safely stored in its cache.
This is possible because Opera has two great features:
1. On Windows at least (I have no idea about the Linux version), it installs cleanly to a directory. There are no hard coded registry keys or such. Everything is under the installation directory.
2. It has a great crash recovery feature. If a PC (or just Opera) crash for whatever reason, I just relaunch it and it will get me back to exactly where I was before the crash, and all the pages loaded from cache.
If you want to do the same, here is the trick:
1. Install Opera to a directory in your USB flash card, ie, K:\Opera
2. Configure all that you want.
3. That is it. Now, the only thing that is hard coded in the installation is the drive letter (K in the example above), so when you go to the other machine, just issue the DOS command "SUBST G: K:\".
This will give you a new drive named K: pointing to the actual USB drive, which is G: in the example.
Have fun.
An easy way to do this is to embed some code in your program that will check a remote server for updates and download them automatically. You can write your own protocol for this.. don't even need http.
I used Borland's Delphi to do this because it has a lot of puiblic domain/shareware components that automate this task. If you do not want to use Delphi, use their C++ product as it can support the same components.
Islam is both a law and a religion.. and just to correct you information, there are many degrees of theft. A poor guy stealing an apple to eat is not penalised. Actually the person who is responsible for this guy being poor (if any) might be repreminded instead (yes, it happened many times).
Similarly, a rich guy has no business stealing an apple.. and unless he has a very good and provable execuse for doing it, his hand will definately be chopped if an Islamic law is applied in any Islamic country today (which, FYI, is not the case in all Islamic countries today, sadly).
It is really pitiful how/.'ers just read an article, then spout out whatever biased or media taught view you have grown up with without even bothering to check the facts. But then, this is slashdot, "news for nerds, stuff that matters".
I am a Muslim, and in case you wonder what I think about this announcement by the Egyptian Al Azhar scholars (BTW, we do not have clergy, we have "scholars".. and their opinions are their own, they are not that of any muslims unless he chose to based on his belief if they have a strong enough argument or not).
Cetainly, Islam strictly forbids theft and has strict penalties for those who commit it. However, in Islam's view (which is to say, in my own understanding of Islam's view on the matter), theft of the floppy itself IS a theft. Wither you are panaltied for that depends on the circumestances. Theft of what is inside the floppy/CD/book is an entirely different matter.
In Islam, there is nothing called "Intellectual properties". Islam considers that when you sell something, it is sold and is considered a full property of the buyer, unless there was an agreement restricting the use of the sold material (ie, EULA). This restriction by itself is subject to to another check to see if it holds to the general islamic principles (ie, in your terms, if it is constitutional).. which is another subject entirely that needs a more than a few paragraphs to discuss.
Thus, to some it up, the scholars at Al Azhar are right in my humble opinion in forbidding the theft of a floppy (or a CD or a book). However, to forbid the free takings of the knowledge contained in the floppy/CD/book is another subject entirely, and they have to come up with a prove that for it, a prove that I have not seen.
Slashdot Mirror
OneDrive to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them.
As to those posters who immediately link this to Islam. Grow up please. This is just a dirty old patriarchy and such censorship has nothing to do with the religion.
Just a slight correction; I did not say the telecoms were "the" source of Fed income, but "a" source. I believe they contribute around 6% of Fed budget. Not that big a chunk, although nothing to sneeze at. As to the rest of your statement, lets just say that I respect your view and that we agree to differ.
Keep in mind that both Etisalat and Du give a large part of their profit to the Federal Government (who is a majority owner of both), so authorities have an interest in disallowing access to tools that may reduce their profit from phone companies. I am not saying that this is right or wrong. It is just a way to raise cash for the Federal Government which does not have many sources of income (oil income goes to the Emirates that own the oil fields, not to the Federal Government)
So what if UAE is trying to protect its youngsters from easily seeing smut content! I know some guys in the agency that controls web access in the UAE. They know about pirate pay, emule and all the other ways a moderately savvy adult can use to access "unsavory" content. Their logic is that "as long as it is not easy for kids to access that kind of content, we are doing our jobs". I am extremely OK with this. Stop trying to impose your moral code on the rest of the world. The mature thing to do is to try to see thing from their perspective, not yours.
FWIW, Saudi Arabia, UAE and India were all asking RIM for the same level of access to the underlying network that RIM already gave to USA and UK (and probably others).
I am a local of UAE. Regardless of whether I agree with this or not, it should be noted in fairness that UAE's Government is asking RIM for access to the underlying data network similar to what RIM has already given the US and the UK Governments.
Kettle, meet pot.
I am pretty sure those psychologists are women!
As other posters stated, mobile phones are the sole communication tool there.. and Taliban are among the users. They must have a military reason to try to enforce this demand.
Fist, car plate numbers:
Car plates number are prestige symbols here (the smaller the number, the better). They are auctioned off to the highest bidders.
As for the rest of your message, I am not going to waste my time refuting each and every point (there are private newspapers and TV channels BTW).
For those interested, UAE is a federation of 7 Emirates (provinces). The largest of which is Abu Dhabi. All the 7 are ruled by dynasties. The governance of the country is voted among those dynasties.
We have been, so far, lucky to have good people ruling those dynasties. This is why you do not hear much about Democracy. Poeple are living quite well and they see no need change what has been working for the last few decades. This might change in the future once we get a bad apple in those dynasties.
During the last few years, the UAE's government, and Dubai government in particular was trying to diversify away from oil. There are some quite huge projects currently underway, with a focus on attracting tourism and business. They have been successful so far, with the country seeing more than 10 million tourists per year, along with most of the multin-nationals using UAE for their regional HQ.
Some of the projects currently being built can be labeled as audacious.. but so far, what was finished among them (and even some that have not been even started yet) have been extremely successful (sold out, mainly to ex-ptriates). These include the tallest tower in the world, three huge palm-shaped islands, along with a collection of islands in the form of the world map, Dubailand, and many others.
I am from the UAE. This (if true) is not a method to get cash and the government is definately not strapped for cash. We have some crazy drivers here.. and if this prove a successful way to control those idiots, then I can put up with such a system..
IBM Pledges To Make XMen More Secure
This probably needs some explaining. As you may know, in Islam we are required to pray five times a day. So, with an addictive game like Chess, some people started to "forgot" about some prayers. This led some scholars to condemn Chess itself on the basis that "anything that leads to a bad act is bad".
As for saying that Chess is "Haram" (forbidden), the forbidden things in Islam are well known and most of them are mentioned in Quran. No one can say at a whim that some other thing is Haram..
Islam does not forbid Chess. If Sistani does not like it, that is his problem. The confusion here stems from the medival era when many people in the Islamic/Arab world were so smitten by Chess that some scholars felt that it was a huge waste of time and said it was "Makrooh" (undesirable). I am not aware of any respected scholar who said it is Haraam (forbidden).
As for the language, you are absolutely correct in saying that Arabic has changed since the time of the Prophet. However, this change is more in the nature of dialects. No one speaks standard Arabic (the language used by Quran) anymore in everyday life.. although it is still the language used in writing, TV news, etc.. and it is rare the native Arab who cannot understand most of it. Heck, we still read poems made by poets who predate Quran and still (unless those poets were loonies who insist in using little useed words even at that time).. still understand what they were talking about (mostly girls (:).
That was not my point actualy. Any person who speaks good English can make up 10 sentences that replicate the style of Shakespeare. No one has ever made such 10 sentences that replicate the style of Quran. Our best poets over the centuries have tried it, but no one came even close. It is not that the Language used by Quran is different from standard Arabic. It is just a matter of otherwordly style.
From a logical perspective, I agree with what you say. However, for us Muslims, it is impossible to dispute that Quran is the word of God (and therefor, the existence of God) because of a simple fact:
Quran was written in a syle of elegance that is simply miraculous, the same style is consistent across the whole Quran. No one was ever able to create even 10 sentences that approach Quranic style and elegance despite 14 centuries of trying.
Back to subject, we Muslims believe in Jesus and Muses, and believe in their books. However, we do not believe these books are authentic anymore because various Pops and kings have changes these scripts over the centuries to suit their needs.
Firebird does have subelects in the Select part of the query.. but not in the From part..
No one hears about this product suit nowadays anymore.. so, why not open source it?
I am sure it is quite stale by now, but there might be a few gems there which an open source project can rescue
This is possible because Opera has two great features:
1. On Windows at least (I have no idea about the Linux version), it installs cleanly to a directory. There are no hard coded registry keys or such. Everything is under the installation directory.
2. It has a great crash recovery feature. If a PC (or just Opera) crashes for whatever reason, I just relaunch it and it will get me back to exactly where I was before the crash, and all the pages will load from the up-to-the-minute cache.
If you want to do the same, here is the trick:
1. Install Opera to a directory in your USB memory stick, ie, K:\Opera
2. Configure all that you want.
3. That is it. Now, the only thing that is hard coded in the installation is the drive letter (K in the example above), so when you go to the other machine, just issue the DOS command "SUBST G: K:\".
This will give you a new drive named K: pointing to the actual USB drive, which is G: in the example.
Now I have my favorite browser, my links, and the web papges I was reading last all in my key ring. Can't say I can do this with any other browser.
Have fun.
This is possible because Opera has two great features: 1. On Windows at least (I have no idea about the Linux version), it installs cleanly to a directory. There are no hard coded registry keys or such. Everything is under the installation directory. 2. It has a great crash recovery feature. If a PC (or just Opera) crash for whatever reason, I just relaunch it and it will get me back to exactly where I was before the crash, and all the pages loaded from cache. If you want to do the same, here is the trick: 1. Install Opera to a directory in your USB flash card, ie, K:\Opera 2. Configure all that you want. 3. That is it. Now, the only thing that is hard coded in the installation is the drive letter (K in the example above), so when you go to the other machine, just issue the DOS command "SUBST G: K:\". This will give you a new drive named K: pointing to the actual USB drive, which is G: in the example. Have fun.
I used Borland's Delphi to do this because it has a lot of puiblic domain/shareware components that automate this task. If you do not want to use Delphi, use their C++ product as it can support the same components.
Works well in Opera too.
Islam is both a law and a religion.. and just to correct you information, there are many degrees of theft. A poor guy stealing an apple to eat is not penalised. Actually the person who is responsible for this guy being poor (if any) might be repreminded instead (yes, it happened many times).
Similarly, a rich guy has no business stealing an apple.. and unless he has a very good and provable execuse for doing it, his hand will definately be chopped if an Islamic law is applied in any Islamic country today (which, FYI, is not the case in all Islamic countries today, sadly).
It is really pitiful how /.'ers just read an article, then spout out whatever biased or media taught view you have grown up with without even bothering to check the facts. But then, this is slashdot, "news for nerds, stuff that matters".
I am a Muslim, and in case you wonder what I think about this announcement by the Egyptian Al Azhar scholars (BTW, we do not have clergy, we have "scholars".. and their opinions are their own, they are not that of any muslims unless he chose to based on his belief if they have a strong enough argument or not).
Cetainly, Islam strictly forbids theft and has strict penalties for those who commit it. However, in Islam's view (which is to say, in my own understanding of Islam's view on the matter), theft of the floppy itself IS a theft. Wither you are panaltied for that depends on the circumestances. Theft of what is inside the floppy/CD/book is an entirely different matter.
In Islam, there is nothing called "Intellectual properties". Islam considers that when you sell something, it is sold and is considered a full property of the buyer, unless there was an agreement restricting the use of the sold material (ie, EULA). This restriction by itself is subject to to another check to see if it holds to the general islamic principles (ie, in your terms, if it is constitutional).. which is another subject entirely that needs a more than a few paragraphs to discuss.
Thus, to some it up, the scholars at Al Azhar are right in my humble opinion in forbidding the theft of a floppy (or a CD or a book). However, to forbid the free takings of the knowledge contained in the floppy/CD/book is another subject entirely, and they have to come up with a prove that for it, a prove that I have not seen.