Month: September 2001

communicating with the arab world

communications between the arab and the western world are primarily hampered by diverse cultural understandings of language.

First is the role of the Arabic language itself as an artistic form. As an early scholar noted, the “magical sounds of the words” combined with the images, have a powerful effect on the psychology of the Arab.(42) Hitti perhaps summed it up best when he stated,

Hardly any language seems capable of exercising over the minds of its users such irresistible influence as Arabic . . The rhythm, the rhyme, the music produce on them the effect of what they call ‘lawful magic’ (sihr halal).(43)

The melodious sounds of the phonetic combinations and plays on words in the recitation of Arabic prose and poetry has been likened to music.(44) Indeed, as one Arab colleague once remarked, recitation of the Koran may be the Western equivalent of classical music. Because of their talent with words, poets throughout Arab history have been held in high esteem. As Chenje noted, “there had been hardly any scholar of consequence in Arab-Muslim society who did not try his hand at poetry.”(45) With the stress always on style in Arabic, eloquence and effectiveness were equated.(46)

The power of the Arabic language for Arabs is also derived from its religious association through the Prophet Mohammed and the Koran. For the believer, the majesty of the language of the Koran is considered a miracle from God for the Muslim prophet was illiterate and unschooled. “It was the Koran — the Revealed Book — that was conceived to represent the highest linguistic achievement of the Arabic language.(47) The Koran was not only revealed in Arabic, but Arabic is the language used in prayer by Muslims throughout the world.

the value of group forming networks

In networks like the Internet, Group Forming Networks (GFNs) are an important additional kind of network capability. A GFN has functionality that directly enables and supports affiliations (such as interest groups, clubs, meetings, communities) among subsets of its customers. Group tools and technologies (also called community tools) such as user-defined mailing lists, chat rooms, discussion groups, buddy lists, team rooms, trading rooms, user groups, market makers, and auction hosts, all have a common theme—they allow small or large groups of network users to coalesce and to organize their communications around a common interest, issue, or goal. Sadly, the traditional telephone and broadcast/cable network frameworks provide no support for groups.

disruptive plumbing

despite all the web services hype, there is steady progress on all fronts. while the e-commerce applications for web services have yet to emerge, there is another phenomenon brewing, almost unnoticed by the web services crowd.

besides connecting resources on the internet, web services are increasingly being found on the desktop itself, where they strive to fulfill the old promise of universal scripting. web services really could be the glue that holds it all together. perl, python, kde, visual basic, soon java, and now apple script have built-in support for web services. this creates interesting opportunities to leverage desktop automation (pioneered early on by apple with their apple script architecture, and later copied by microsoft with its windows scripting host.) apple demoed a few no-frills examples of what web services can do. very interesting stuff, especially in light of adobes recent announcement of their XMP infrastructure to provide standard metadata facilities across its product line. the semantic web is taking shape, driven by forces who would not necessarily be associated with the topic.

Clueless clients

the fine folks at a list apart have a nice collection of horror tales from the world of stupid clients. a few samples:

Why is it that there seems to be an attitude that it is O.K not to pay creatives of all kinds for their work? I am sure I am not the only one who has heard this:

“Well, we can’t pay you, but it would be such great exposure..”.

Now when I approach clients about design, I don’t give them “options”, I give them one sample plus an explanation.

clients whose brothers best mates dog can do it cheaper

Why is it that…

the clients who spend the LEAST are the biggest pains in the ass!?

Lately, all the small businesses I work with are overly concerned with the fantasy of being a “top 10” site on the search engines. This used to happen in 1995), then it went away (for me). For some reason, it’s back.

One of the many problems we had was that the client couldn’t specify their design requirements clearly. One of our favorite quotes was “we want it in just one color – blue and orange”.

“Hi. I want a website. I have 18 target groups and 43 main goals for the site. Can you make it interactive, you know, that Flash thing? I won’t tell you my budget because you might use it up, but it’s less than the price of 1 ad in PoDunk News. The only reason my cousin doesn’t do it at home on his 486 with FrontPage is because he got a new sales job and doesn’t have the time. I’ve already outlined the pages for you, so I’ve actually SAVED you some time. Here’s a brochure. Will you give me a working demo on spec? I need to see something before I know what I want. Will it take more than a month? Let me know when it’s finished.”

lameness at the top

this week, i participated in an 1-day economic forum at the un conference center in bangkok. pm thaksin’s performance was less than stellar, barely able to read from the script. while it provided few new clues about the economic outlook, i was very impressed with the performance of Kenneth Curtis from Goldman Sachs. having just arrived by learjet from frankfurt, he gave his 2 cents on the world economy in flawless, logically coherent statements (which he had not prepared, as the Q & A showed)

The crisis will accelerate the shift in technology, by placing a premium on cost-cutting, efficiency and earnings. Anyone who thinks these forces will slow is wrong.

Preemptible kernel

montavista has a nice paper on their recent linux performance work. it seems that a fully preemptible linux kernel is now only a small patch away.

The MontaVista preemptible kernel patch modifies the definition (implementation) of the SMP kernel’s primary IPC, the spinlock, changing it from its SMP specific implementation to a preemption lock. In the preemption scenario, as in its SMP application, the locking function acts as a control on reentrancy to critical sections of kernel code.

Additionally, the preemptible kernel patch modifies the interrupt handling software to allow rescheduling on return from interrupt if a higher priority process has become executable, even if the interrupted process was running in kernel mode (provided the process is not in a critical and locked region). SMP spin unlocks are also redefined to return the system to a preemptible state, and check if an immediate context switch is needed.

Lastly, the kernel build definition for a uniprocessor target system is modified to include the spinlocks construct (implemented as preemption locks). Through these basic changes, the Linux kernel becomes generally preemptible (with short non-preemptible regions corresponding to the spinlocked regions in an SMP kernel). Process level responsiveness is dramatically improved, both on average and worst cases.

unabomber feelings rise

it was only a matter of time before gun nuts would come out of their caves and claim that giving everyone a gun would have prevented this tragedy. typical of backwards-facing people..

especially eric s. raymond.

We have learned today that airport security is not the answer. At least 4 separate terror teams were able to sail right past all the elaborate obstacles — the demand for IDs, the metal detectors, the video cameras, the X-ray machines, the gunpowder sniffers, the gate agents and security people trained to spot terrorists by profile. There have been no reports that any other terror units were successfully prevented from achieving their objectives by these measures. In fact, the early evidence is that all these police-state-like impositions on freedom were exactly useless — and in the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center lies the proof of their failure.

my answer:

lets face it. this event will increase surveillance everywhere. no point in returning to the caves and carrying guns. actually, it is largely irrelevant whether you carry a gun or not. what is truly relevant is whether you will be allowed access to all these surveillance systems, so that it becomes peer-to-peer surveillance, or if some hidden agency controls it all. think decentralization. nobody cares if you run around with a gun, you will be closely watched, anyways. trying to ignore this reality is a weakly disguised attempt to flee into an unabomber utopia.