Thursday, December 31, 2009

No Silver Bullet




This year we have an Object Oriented Programming (OOP) course, well we work from a book (I don't know it's name :D) anyway I read some parts of it and there is one part that I really really liked, this part discusses the "No Silver Bullet" concept that was issued by Fred Brooks in 1986 in a paper published under the same name, the paper is about software engineering.

This paper tells us that there are two main types of difficulties facing that software development :
essence and accidental, the essence difficulties are the ones that are part of software and they cannot be solved but can be reduced and dealt with, using different methods like Object Oriented Paradigm, the others which are the accidental ones might be solved through researches and other ways.

The four essence difficulties presented in Fred's paper are:

1 - Complexity
  • Software is complex in a terrible way even more than Hardware, this is because in software there are numerous cases that are to be handled and different technologies to be supported which implies complexity, this is very clear in large products that contain many modules that have different states and interact with each other in many ways, to bring it closer, count the number of loops, if statements and other controls in a program, you will find that the functionality of the software (when large) cannot be comprehended by one person.
2 - Conformity
  • "No problem, Call the IT department and tell them to do ... " that's something that each company owner must have said, people not in the field of software development always have a strong belief that software is easy to make and can "adapt" with any thing, this may sound correct but it's not, this causes software to be the last step in building a factory or starting a company, sometimes the design of the institution is not the smartest one but cannot be changed, but anyway the software should support it, this happens a lot when old institutions decide to add technology.
3 - Changeability
  • Software must change during any of its steps (requirements, specification, analysis, ...), any way, even a small change implies the reintegrating the modules and regression testing to ensure that the change would not harm the software. Software also have to change when a new Hardware shows up to work on it, and even if the product was perfect a customer is likely to ask for expansion of the software to support even more features.
4 - Invisibility
  • Any thing can be visualized, doctors have plastic humans, x rays, images and many other things that help them to visualize anything in the human body, architects, mechanical engineers have drawings, every one has someway that used to talk about different terms in the same languages, unfortunately software is not like that, it is impossible to visualise the way a software works and even thought there is Unified Mpdeling Language( UML) it's not really unified, add to that the fact that even with it you cannot "visualize" the software.

These are the four essences difficulties of software that we software engineers are cursed with :D , and there is "No Silver Bullet" for them which means they cannot be solved.
Anyway I think that Fred is a little bit pessimistic or may be he is just realistic, what do you think?

To read more click here.
To understand the meaning of the term "Silver Bullet" click here.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Mysteries Again














Dan Brown comes again to the best-sellers list with his new novel "The Lost Symbol". Full of mystery, adventure and stunning historical facts, "The Lost Symbol" takes you through a tour in the most famous buildings in Washington D.C., reading hidden symbols and fascinating paintings, reveling with this many hidden facts about the Masons and the forefathers who built America.

The novel is great, I can say nothing but this, it's enough great thing that you will read the 509 pages like you read a newspaper. I just wanted to state here some facts that I came through about the novel and the author:

  1. I read Angels and Demons (2000), The Da Vinci Code (2003) and The Lost Symbol (2009). The three were best of what I read (maybe because I don't read that much anyway :D) but they resemble too too much, The Da Vinic Code was the best, then I read Angels and Demons you feel like you are reading some things that you already read in The Da Vinic Code, to be fair The Lost Symbol he though very similar in the structure to the other two novels, still has new to offer.


Looking deeper into commons:
  • Secret communities:
1 - Angels and Demons:

Talks of a secret brotherhood that was forgotten and thought to have demolished away, the brotherhood is called The Illumaniti, a group of o pressed scientists all over history that tried to keep themselves alive and hide from the church and also waiting for the right time to take the church down.

2 - The Da Vinic Code:

Talks of Priory of Sion, a secret brotherhood that tried always to keep a hidden truth from the church till it was the right time to expose it.


3 - The Lost Symbol:

Talks of the Masons, the well known but still secret brotherhood, They were too much believing in the unfolded potential of the human being especially the human mind, that according to them was capable of doing anything, they hid these Ancient Mysteries in an underground location somewhere in Washington D.C. till it was the right time for human to know the truth.

I think it's crystal clear to you how much the three resemble, in fact they are identical (of course not the brotherhood, I mean the scenarios).

  • Beginning of events:
The three novels share one starting point where events start to be exciting and Robert Langdon (Professor of symbology and iconology in Harvard) starts to get into trouble.

The point is a crinimial act to an old man:

1 - Angels and Demons:
The murder of Leonardo Vetra, a scientist in CERN.

2 - The Da Vinic Code:
The murder of Jacques Saunière, curator of Louvre Museum in Paris.

3 - The Lost Symbol:
The kidnapping of Peter Solomon, Smithsonian secretary, billionaire, and Freemason, which happens to be a close friend of Langdon.

  • Female role:
Like all novels, a female role is necessary to acquire balance and to be able to describe different feelings. Any way, Dan Brown never tries to hide his intentioned "Stuffing" of a woman to be beside Langdon all the novel.

1- Angels and Demons:
Vittoria Vetra
the daughter of the murdered Leonardo Vetra. She worked with him in CERN on researches.

2 - The Da Vinic Code:
Sophie Neveu is the granddaughter of Louvre curator Jacques Saunière, that
has been murderd. She works as cryptographer for the French Police.

3 - The Lost Symbol:
Kathrine Solomon, sister of kidnapped Peter Solomon and a Neotic Scientist that reached astonishing scientific facts about human mind.

Again the three characters are relatives of the old man that was murdered or kidnapped in the beginning of the novel.

  • Endings:
The end in each of the three novels is rather unsatisfying, although they are realistic but they are much less than what I expected while I was reading the thrilling novel.
The three novels end up with reaching the fact that whatever Langdon was after during the novel, was actually in front of him all the time.

1- Angels and Demons:
The bomb hidden under the Vaticane is found only one minute before it blows up and is carried in a chopper to blow it in the air, something that is not convincing and rather absurd.

2 - The Da Vinci Code:
Langdon finds out after following the trails that The Holy Grail is not a treasure like many legends say but rather refering to Mary Magdelne who is claimed to have married to Jesus, which is a clear proof that he was human which destroys all what the church is based on.

3 - The Lost Symbol:
The Lost Word which is claimed to have enormous power comes out to be the Bible which is of course ridiculous because Langdon himself in other novels stated that the Bible was written by humans and that it had many contradictions and many many versions. Something else, if it is "just" the Bible, why the Masons hid it all this time although every one knows about the Bible !!!
  • Shocking Turnings:
In each novel there is a character that all the time is on the good side then suddenly it turns up to be the person who did all the harm all over the novel !!

1 - Angels and Demons:
Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca is wise, helpful and you like him and see him as a very good man, then at the end he turns out to be the one who set every thing up.

2 - The Da Vinci Code:
Sir Leigh Teabing, a friend of Langdon that knows about the Holy Grail more than any one, and helps Langdon in his search for it also comes out at the end to be the one who planned the whole thing to put Langdon in his quest for the Holy Grail and then take it from him !!

3 - The Lost Symbol:
Mala'kh
the tattoed man who believes in evil and dark magic, the man who killed Zach (Peter's son) will come out to be Zach himself !!

  • In the begining of every novel, Dan Brown states that all the art and history mentioned in the novel is real, anyway many critics say that there are many wrong and false historical events in his novels.

  • If you want to know more about the novels or Dan Brown, I recommend the Wikipedia !!

  • Really after I read these novels, I figured out how much lucky I am to be Muslim, because while so many are running, hiding and believing in mysteries and the unknown, creating with this rituals and rules that they escaped religions to avoid, my religion is based on facts not mysteries and asks me for only simple prayers, doings and sayings that don't confuse me with contradictions.

These were the things I wanted to say about the novels, they are my personal opinions and surely you can disagree with my.
Comments are welcomed.




Sunday, November 8, 2009

Mounting Volumes through terminal




In Linux operating systems, partitions of your hard drive are not mounted when you start, you can mount them easily through the normal file manager, anyway this way is not convenient, let's say that I want to open a recent document in Open Office but I forgot to mount the volume where this file exists, this will cause a file not found error to appear. Another thing that mounting volumes in different order causes different paths, so you have to mount volumes every time you start up and in the same order.

Sorry for so much talking, anyway thanks to shell scripts. you can write few lines to mount all volumes for you.

We will see how to do this:

1 - As you should know, every hardware is represented by a file in Linux file system in the folder /dev , so the first thing we need to do is to know the names of the volumes we are going to mount. We can do this by typing this in the terminal.

sudo fdisk -l


This will show us the partitions, their spaces and their names (sda1, sda2, ...)



2 - Let's say I want to mount the partitions sda1, sda5 and sda7, before I call the mount command I must create a mount point which is a folder under the /media folder in the file system. Through this file I will access the contents of the partition.

3 - We will create the folder using
sudo mkdir /media/anyname


4 - I will mount the partition using
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /media/anyname
Note: Partitions that are mounted through terminal must be unmounted through terminal, so if you want to unmount a partition use
sudo umount /media/anyname


It's better if you delete the mount point using
sudo rmdir /media/anyname

These attached files contain the shell script that I wrote to mount and unmount volumes, of course you will change the names of the partitions (sda#) and make them executable using the chmod command.




Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Installing Qt on My Ubuntu





This week we are assigned to create a simple drawing program using C++, there are different libraries that you can use to develop GUI using C++, any way my friend Abolnour (our open source godfather) advised me to use Qt which is an open source library that enables you to write GUI programs in C++.

The installation process is easy, you have to go to this download page, then choose the LGPL/Free and choose your platform (I chose Linux 32 bit because I am trying to avoid my Vista :D). it's safer and better to dowload the whole SDK whic includes and IDE called Qt-Creator that you can use to create your applications.

After you finish downloading the file (275.4 MB in our case), you will use two lines in the terminal to install every thing.

1 - Navigate to the directory where you downloaded the file using cd

cd /media/disk/Downloads


that's for me (the path will be different for you)

2 - use the command

chmod u+x qt-sdk-linux-x86-opensource-2009.04.1.bin



which makes the file executable.


3 - use the command

./qt-sdk-linux-x86-opensource-2009.04.1.bin


which will run you an installation wizard that asks you where you want to install the Qt-creator
and the libraries.

After that you can use will find the Qt-Creator in the Applications --> Programming, you can use
this tutorial to learn the Qt.

Any way, you may face the silly error I faced when I tried to build a project
the error is
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
After really turning the Internet upside down, I found that you have to install an extra package using this command

sudo apt-get install libqt4-dev

By the way, the best thing about Qt that it's platform independent although you write it with C++, there is something else
called GTK that you can use.

that's all enjoy Qt !!




Sunday, October 18, 2009

Linux got it all







Many Claim that Linux distributions have very little when it comes to the cool look, well this is absolutely wrong simply because Linux gives you better look than any one else (I mean ... :D). Just check this site it is really great, it contains a huge number of cool looking themes, backgrounds, screen savers, splash screen, screenlets and even more that work on Gnome Desktop. I am sure you can find something for KDE.

Not covinced yet !!! why not use the fancy "compiz" tool, this tool enables you to literaly "Play" with your Desktop, use the Cube to jump between desktops, fire effect and other great things. After you download it from this page, you will find it in System --> Prefrences, you can configure it there to enable the features you need, and you will find the shortcut keys here.

The best thing that normally all of this stuff is for free, safe and easy download like all Free and Open Source products.
ENJOY !

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

عربية فول





بجد كل ما أشوف عربية فول ببقى خلاص قلبى بيتقطع ... أصلا ً أنا واحد أكيل و ممكن أكل أى وقت أى حاجة بحبها أى كمية , وبموت فى حاجة اسمها فول و بادوب فى الفلافل , بحكم التواجد فى الشوارع لأى سبب ( أحيانا ً كتير من غير سبب ) الواحد أكل من محلات كتير حاجات مختلفة: أكلنا فول و فلافل و كبده مالهاش علاقة بالكبده ( سلام يا فهمى ) و سجق تقريبا ً ريسيكليد و فراخ بانيه عمرها ماكاكت و كشرى بلاستيك ... الحاجة اللى لسه الواحد معملهاش هيى عربية الفول ... كفاية احساس الأوبين بوفيه اللى مليان بصل و بدنجان و مخلل و الطبق الألومنيا الصغير اللى مابيخلص , الواحد حاول يرضى غروره فى محمد أحمد بس للأسف برضه البنى أدم باطنه فاضية و لازم أكل من العربية فى يوم إن شاء الله و ربنا يستر.

سبيل





أخيرا ً سبيل ... أحمدك يا رب , "لا تنسوا الحاجة فاطمة فى الدعاء" طيب يا سيدى من عينينا ... تمد إيديك و تفتح الحنفية بس ما فيش ميه , طبعا ً حضرتك متنرفز و تعض تلعن فى الحاجة فاطمة و هى أصلا ً مالهاش ذنب , إنما واحد ظريف زيك هوا اللى كاسر الكولدير و مبوظوا , تضطر إنك تشرب من أولة من اللى محطوطين جنب الكولدير مع إن العالم كلها حواليك عماله توعيك ماتشربش مكان حد و ماتكلش مكان حد و ما تمشيش جنب حد و ما تسلمش على حد من الأخر كده أعض فى بيتكو و ريحنا منك .
كل السبل برضوه قديمة يمكن عشان كلها قديمة و مافيش حد بقى بيعمل سبيل أصلا ً أو شوارعنا بتبهدل أى حاجة أو استخدامنا الغير واعى و جايز كل ده بس بيفضل السبيل ليه حلاوته فى بؤقك . شربت منه و أنت راجع من المدرسة ... و أنت رايح الدرس ... دست راس واحد صحبك و هو بيشرب لأنك أستاذ غلاسة فراح هوا رشك بتلات كوبيات ميه مش هموا الشتيمة و الضرب من الناس و أنت طلعت تجرى فى الخالعون .
ربنا يرحم الحاجة فاطمة و أمثالها

Monday, October 5, 2009

نصبة شاى







أى حتة فى مصر لازم يكون فيها نصبة شاى ... أى شركة أو مدرسة أو كلية أو على البحر أو حتى وزارة . النصبة ممكن تكون نضيفة و ممكن تكون ... يعنى مش قوى بس فى أى حالة الحاجة سواء كانت شاى , قهوة , ينسون , نسكافيه أو أى بطيخ بتبقى عسل و بتظبوط الدماغ . يمكن يكون الرغبة فى حاجة تفوق هى اللى بتفوق بس المهم أنك تفوق بدل ماتنام فى المحاضرة .
حاجة مهمة برضو أن اللى بيبقى ماسك النصبة بيبقى طيب و متواضع و محبوب من كل الناس مش عارف ليه و بتحس أنه بينقذك و إنه له مكان مهم فى حياتك . ده غير إن نفوذه بيبقى كبير و يعرف يوصل أكتر من الدكاتره كمان (فى الكلية) و يخلصلك أى حاجة ببساطة لأن كل الناس عارفاه و هو اللىى ظابطلها دماغها.
أنا رايح أضرب قهوة من أحمد ... أجبيلك معايا ؟؟



Thursday, September 3, 2009

Cell Phone As USB Modem





Well, I don't know if you already know this or not but you can use your cell phone as a USB Modem so you can have Internet Connection wherever there is a network coverage for your cell phone.

I discovered this by mere concidence, I plugged my Nokia 5200 to my laptop and was copying something from the memory card and after I finished the Data Storage mode I clicked quit then every thing happened !!!

My nice Ubuntu 8.10 notified me that it can connect me to the broadband that it provided by my cell phone so I clicked yes and I choose Mobinil as my service provider (the list included Vodafone and Etisalat), after that a network was added to the available networks so I turned off my router and wireless device on the lap and connected to the broadband.

I couldn't believe that I was able to go to Google and search with a keyword using the broadband Internet, I can't deny that it was slow actually very very slow but I think if you have a better cell phone than mine (something of the N series) you can do good browsing especially if you disable images and Java Scripts.

Try it and tell me how it went with you ...

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

First Day

At last Software Freedom Day (SFD) has started !! to day we the organizing team went to college early to prepare thing, we had to get tables, stands and chairs, we also prepared registration lists and hanged the posters. The great thing that people came early and they were excited, actually the number was larger than we expected, we had about 500 registration and about 300 people showed up today, some of them were registered but some made on-site registration.

The day started with an opening that was delivered by Eng.Hamdy Khalil from eSpace, he explained what is Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and everyone liked it, then they had a 30 minute break to get the program, register their attends and claim their prizes: bags, CDs and pens.

At 12:30, Eng.Mekkawy also known as linuxawy from EGLUG started his session about the Free Software explaining the Main Four Freedoms, he also gave them his email and asked their questions.

Well after that people made some inquiries at the stands and registered for the study groups which actually have so many registered attendees (almost everyone!!).

If you haven't been there today, you missed alot but don't worry you still can come and join us even if you haven't yet registered.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Getting Close





It's only week before Software Freedom Day !! so we the organizing team made a meeting yesterday discussing what we had done so far and what we should be doing in the coming period. The meeting actually started with bad news about our funding and suddenly we found ourselves having very little time to finish many things, any way after 2 hours of discussion, we found our way out and we made a work plan, each team had a task to finish by night.
Thank God we were able to finish on time because we really want this event to be the best and the biggest in Alexandria.

The speakers in our event differ in their knowledge and backgrounds, we have Eng.Mohamed Sayed from Yahoo!, Abderlahman El KAfil from Morocco, Ahmed Mekkawy from EGLUG and others more.
we have computer security presentations, linux (day to day usage), Open Source and GIS and more, we have also a presentation about Wikipedia along with a stand for the Arabic Wikipedia Team.

So why not register and come with us??
Register here and have the chance of winning one or more of our prizes.

The program is really nice and rich ... check it here

Friday, August 21, 2009

Hungry Nukes







All over history, man developed weapons to protect himself and his country from others, that's reasonable and even nukes made sense when they were first produced may be because conventional weapons at that early time were not sometimes capable of causing enough destruction and death to enemy targets, also attacking cities and civilians by savage force was a daily act done by aircrafts, destroyers, artillery and infantry.

Now at the 21st century, every one knows that there is no “right way to use nukes” because when fired must cause massive death tolls and great environmental damages to targeted areas, despite all of that countries are still spending trillions of dollars making nuclear and biological weapon, without counting money spent on transporting, securing and maintenance of already existing nukes. Reports say that the US spent 5.5 trillion $ on making nukes while it has been estimated that fixing every thing – I mean: poverty and illiteracy elimination , improving health care, providing clean water and shelters, debt relief of developing countries and creating sustainable energy resources – on this planet would cost only 260 billion $ annually for 10 years !!

Leaving these stunning economic facts about nuclear weapons and thinking about the security issues we find that some countries have nuclear weapons though they lie in “very hot spots” like Pakistan, Israel and countries which were part of the Soviet Union, these countries along with others were able to build hundreds of nuclear war heads, they surely have good security measures to protect their war heads, but who can guarantee that none of the hundreds would fall in the hands of any extremist or terrorist group? Imagine that Taliban was able to reach a nuclear facility in Pakistan or steal a nuke war head, they won't hesitate to blow it up any where in the world. Imagine an extremist government reached power in Israel that already kills civilians with internationally forbidden weapons. For previous Soviet Union nations, I will not say imagine because it's already known that there are hundreds of missing missiles and nukes.

This doesn't mean that other great powers like the US and Russia have the right to have nuclear weapons, they should stop making nukes and also follow a scheduled disarming process to demolish the existence of nuclear weapons, the problem that you cant' just get rid of a nuke by blowing it up and the disarming operations cost much of money, but we should do it fast or one day our life will be like one of these movies where people live in crumbled cities and starving to death but they have nukes at their backyard.

Piracy







How many times have you payed for a downloaded application or operating system? Never, then welcome aboard you are a Pirate, if you have uploaded files that others downloaded then you are a Captain !

Copyright laws protect software from piracy, but in some countries piracy rate is up to 95% of all running software, this due to legislation that is not aware enough and leaves pirates unleashed or in best conditions leaves back doors opened for them.

Losses are estimated by billions for software companies and stores which lose markets due to their software being accessed through the Internet, United States comes on the top followed by China, Russia, India, France and United Kingdom, they lost more than $27 billion in 2008.

Although many countries cooperate fighting piracy, still global piracy rate rose in 2008 from %38 to %41, but looking at the bright side, piracy rates dropped in little bit more than half of 110 studied countries and rose only in 16 countries. Egypt has done well as it dropped from %65 to %59 in the period between 2004 – 2008.

After that cops talk, let's be honest, is piracy so bad? No. Well, we know it violates copyrights and steal others' work but it doesn't destroy markets as we claimed earlier simply because these markets never existed from the beginning; no one in a third- world country would pay 300$ for Windows Vista Ultimate when that person lives on less than 2 dollars a day.

From that we find that piracy destroyed no markets, contrary they made companies and software more famous in parts of the world where these companies couldn't reach the public. This is not defending piracy but in a no piracy world - which is almost impossible, companies will be making little extra money, but millions of people will have no access to technology, then is it a Robin Hood act? No , it's still a theft and must be stopped and contained as much as it could be, but in a way that guarantees copyrights for producers and cheap access to technology for public. Companies should contribute more in Open Source communities to provide basic software for free or at least adjust prices in countries according to local standards of living.

Tell us what you think about piracy and what is the best way to fight it without depriving the poor from accessing technology and still not destroying IT industries?

IT Making Money






IT companies like all companies have one target which is making money but in IT field there are many ways to make money, some of these ways are traditional like selling licensed software and hardware and some are not like advertising and producing open source software, the common thing between them is that they all make huge money.

Microsoft, Apple, hp and Dell all follow the traditional way and it has kept them the highest profit making companies – though hp has highest revenues, Microsoft has highest profits. These companies are rather old, they produce laptops, operating systems, video games, smart phones and everything you can imagine. Yes they make big money but still not so popular especially with people that care about Open Source and freedom of choice, you may not feel it but these companies collaborate with each other to keep the market and IT media masses under their control, they issue implicit and explicit agreements to support each other's software and hardware. Example of this is hp and Dell selling laptops with a pre-installed version of Vista. These marketing behaviors made them face many lawsuits, Apple was sued by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) for trying to stop and remove online forums discussing iPhone. Microsoft also was fined $794 million for including Windows Media Player with Windows XP installation, imposing it on the user instead of letting him choose the media player he wants to use.

Leaving the giants and heading to the new stormers like Yahoo!, Google, MySpace and Facebook. All are less than 15 years old and all represent the ideal advertising model of making money. Google alone made about $10,491 billion in 2006 only by ads on their pages, this money represents 99% of total revenues of the company, this proves that ads can make big money.

The main idea in the advertising scheme is providing users with free or cheap - charge services and keeping them attached to them all day, then fill the site with tons of ads, this approach always needs more pages to support more ads and make more money, these pages can be applications, news or search results with ads relevant to your keywords. It also needs the company to spread its name in any way by producing anything: toolbars, gadgets and mail services. Attaching users to pages is taking a new approach that depends on making the page more personal as your own: like iGoogle, My Yahoo! and of course profiles on social networks. Any way, this is highly criticized for damaging the users' social interaction in real life, making them addicted to the Internet and wasting their time.

When we discuss making money using Open Source this does not mean that all Open Source applications are produced to make money, some of them are produced by normal people who have the passion to help others by coding.

Anyway, companies still can make money from Open Source. It may seem impossible but when you think deeply, you find that it might be the easiest way of making money, you can simply sell that software, the GNU license under which most open source projects are released doesn't forbidden selling the project, but to make people pay for what they can get for free, you have to provide support and packaging where you sell collection of configured software that can be installed easily with their manuals on CDs. The software can also be used as an advertising tool, you can place ads on the project's page on the Internet or use it to promote another version that has extra features but is not free.

What is this label?

In this label, I will put articles that I wrote in Aimun 09 newsletter, hope you all like them.
AIMUN is Alexandria International Model Of United Nations, it is a conference held in bib Alex every summer where young people discuss some issues and play as decision makers and head of states.
I wrote few articles in the NewsLetter that belongs to the event.

Virtualization







To understand the main concept of virtualization, we will use a real – life example:
Presume you have four different sized people who want to go to work, you can get each one of them a vehicle that suits his route and size, this is going to cost you much and also each car will be used for a little time and then left parking. What if you put them all in one vehicle each of them with his seat that suits him and in a way or another let each "virtualizes" that the vehicle is all his. He can use the radio, the air condition and everything else in the vehicle.

Well, the second way is surely better as it is cheaper, faster and gets all what the vehicle can provide. This second way is "Virtualization" except that we will replace the four different sized men with four different operating systems that we want to use and the vehicle with a computer that has virtualization environment so each operating system sees the resources which we demonstrated as the radio and the air condition as if they were only for it.

At this point, a question has jumped into your head: How one radio will be used at the same time by four men? Well this what virtualization software does, it manages and organizes this operation. Consider it as a layer that creates four virtual tuners one for each man so when a man changes the station, the "one" radio will use the "one" Antenna to get "different" station that the man will hear on his own "headphone" leaving the other men undisturbed.

Another question: How one antenna will deliver different stations? That's the hardware part of virtualization. Instead of buying four antennas we will use only one but each man will have his own amplifier that will enable him to get the station he tuned to. If not convinced, think of it as one router that serves many users each using the internet in a completely different way.

It may come across your mind that creating the virtual tuners and the headphones is going to cost more; surely you will change your mind when you know that with no virtualization each computer will be using only 10 to 15 percent of its processing capacity and still consuming the same energy as a full used computer.

For normal user, this doesn't mean much but for IT companies and web hosting servers, this means saving millions of dollars. It is enough to know that using virtualization, each 10 up to 20 servers can be replaced with only one server. This not only saves money and time to buy and install servers but also reduces size of data centers where servers are located.

With the ever increase in data stored on web and in data bases, virtualization will be a must in order to contain all data in a reasonable cost. IT giants like Sun, VMware, Microsoft and many got that point and they are competing who can provide the cheapest and fastest virtualization technology.

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Just Started !!



First Meeting of Software Freedom Day organizers



The time was 10:00 am and the place was one of the classes of Computer Science Department (CSD), Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, the event was the kick off meeting of Software Freedom Day @ Alexandria University.

Let's talk about the event it self before we talk about the meeting, it is a two week event that is intended to start at 1st September 2009. The event targets every one, its main goal is not only to introduce Free Software to people but also to give them the real life experience gained by others who started using Free Software and joined Open Source communities along ago.

The Event will mainly consist of presentations and demos covering wide range of topics,
stands providing on site information and installtion, study groups and contests along with other things, so it seems that we have lots of things to do in the coming month, and you have the chance to enjoy two weeks of Free Software Mania.

Back to the meeting, it lasted for about two hours and was started by each one introducing him / her self, then Ahmed Saeed who is the head of coordination team told us everything about the event and explained to us the tasks we should be doing for the coming month. Teams were created and will be led by four coordinators: Ahmed Abd Al Aziz, Asmaa El Sayed, Yasmin Mohammed and Abd Rahman Gamal who all have previous experience in organizing many similar events.

Come and join us, you will enjoy your time and get great knowledge which may change your life forever or at least the technology you use in your daily life.

You can find more information here and you can join our group on facebook.

Check the blog and the facebook group for updated news about the event, See you all there !!

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Run .jar file on Linux




Hi everyone,

Today, I am bringing to you a very nice thing, if you have written java code on windows, exported it as a .jar file and used it on Windows but was unable to do this on linux though you have JDK installed on linux, then this is the right place for you !!

To do this surely you must have a correct and runnable java code with a main class.

Steps:
======

If you are using netbeans right click on the project and then click clean and build, on eclipse right click on the project and then choose export and choose as runnnable jar file.

This will create a .jar file in your project folder (for netbeans inside the dist folder).

You will open your nice terminal and start by creating a "launcher" which is a shell script that you create so that it can run your .jar file.

In this example I made a simple watch and the jar file is named SimpleWatch.jar, ok?


you will type:


cd /usr/local/bin


then


gksudo gedit SimpleWatchLauncher.sh


the last command will open the Text editor you copy and paste this

#! /bin/bash
cd /home/khaled/NetBeansProjects/SimpleWatch/dist
java -jar /home/khaled/NetBeansProjects/SimpleWatch/dist/SimpleWatch.jar


Of course you will replace "/home/khaled/NetBeansProjects/SimpleWatch/dist" with the path of the directory that contains your .jar file

Save and exit the Text editor






Type this in the terminal (Make sure you are in /usr/local/bin)

sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/SimpleWatchLauncher.sh



That's it you are done !!!


now open your terminal and type:

cd /usr/local/bin/


Click enter
then type


SimpleWatchLauncher.sh



Your application will Run isA and you will now that Java is really platform independent :D

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

فرانكو لعربي







عاملين إيه ؟
البوست ده أصلا أنا كاتبه كله فرانكو مش كاتب ولا كلمة فيه بالحروف العربي اللي على الكيبورد !! إزاي بقى ده عن طريق برنامج جامد جدا مايكروسوفت نزلته اسمه Maren البرنامج ده تقدر تخليه يحول الكلام الفرانكو إلى عربي وإنت بتكتب والصراحة البرنامج جامد جدا و التوقع بتاعه رائع جدا لكن في حاجة مهمة كنت عاوز أقولها إن على اد ماالبرنامج ده و ال برامج اللي زيه بتخلينا نكتب عربي أكتر على الانترنت على اد ماهي يخلينا نستغنى تماما عن الحروف العربي وتقريبا ننساها لاننا كده بجد عمرنا ماهانسخدم الزراير العربي على الكيبورد لاننا ياما هانكتب فرانكو أصلا أو هانكتب فرانكو مترجم عربي

عموما البرنامج جامد جدا وأكيد هستخدموا بالذات في بوستس على البلوج هنا في اللابل الجديد اللي اسمه بالعربي
الحاجة برده الجديدة إن مايكروسوفت نزلت البرنامج ده ببلاش يمكن عشان عارفة إن قليل قوي من المستخدمين العرب ممكن يدفعوا فلوس مقابل سفتوار بس ياريت مايكروسوفت تنزل نسخ تشتغل على انظمة تانية غير الويندوز زي لينكس وأبونتيو وكمان ماك .... يا رب



ممكن تنزل البرنامج من اللينك ده

واتفرج على الفيديو اللذيذ ده كمان عن البرنامج


سلام

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Clean you Vista










Hi everyone,

If you are using Windows Vista like me, you may have noticed that the free space on your C drive where you installed Windows decreases even if you install no new software on it. This is caused by many things, the most important ones are temporary internet files which are files stored on your hard to enable you surf the internet faster, Temp folder which may be up to five GB which saves configurations about applications you ran on your computer, the hibernate files which enables your computer to hibernate.

You can clean them up and free space so you can speed up your system by using the clean up disk tool
Start -> Accessories -> System tools -> Disk Clean Up

Any way if you really want to clean every thing and get more space, I recommend a tool called CCleaner (Crap Cleaner), it just Free 3.8 MBytes and still it cleans your folders safely and fast, it cleaned about 9 GB from my C Drive !!!

Go to CCleaner

Sunday, June 21, 2009

لون روحى











أقف أمامها , أمرر أصابعى على إفريزها الذهبى , أتحسس حروف اسمى التى نقشت بعناية . اقترب قليلا ً لأشتم رائحة الألوان و القماش , ما زالت الرائحة كما كانت عندما أدركتها أول مرة .

"أسف و لكنى لا استطيع منع نفسى" هكذا همست إلى اللوحة و أنا أعلم أنها ستتفهمنى . نظرت إلى الفرشاة الموضوعة بحرص على الترابيزة المجاورة ... بدأت التقط علب الألوان و انزع عنها ذلك الغلاف الشفاف و عينى تمتلىء بالدموع , صوت بداخلى يتوسلنى لماذا تريد أن تعبث بها ؟ لقد تركت القدر يرسمها لك طوال السنين الماضية كان يصلحها هو كلما أفسدها . كنت دائما ً تسخر من الأخرين إذا رأيتهم يغيرون لوحاتهم بإيديهم و تندهش منهم و هم يزيلون ما أضافوه للتو , تتمزق لوحاتهم يرقعونها بجلودهم , يحاولون فى يأس استعادة عذريتها التى أضاعوها منذ سنين.

ظلت لوحتى هى الأكمل و الأجمل , كلما يسألنى أحدهم كيف استطعت أن تحافظ عليها أجيب بأنى فى الأساس لم ألمسها قط , ينظر إلى باستغراب يتمتم ببعض كلمات " أحمق ... مغفل ... مجنون ... " , لكنى لم أهتم أبدا ًبما يقولون , و ليس كلامهم هو الذى يحرك يدى الأن و هى تخلط الألوان استعدادا ً لأن ارسم على لوحتى لأول مرة .

- حلوة أوى اللوحة , بس أنت فين ؟
- ايه !! أنا فين ؟؟!
- أه أنت فين ؟؟
أخذت أبحث بين هذه الوجوه المنتشرة على سطح اللوحة و لكنى لم أجد نفسى .
- مششش عارف تلاقينى هنا و لا هناك بس مش باين , ما أنا قولتيلك أنا عمرى ما جيت جنبها !!


لم ترد و لكنى رأيت فى عينيها ابتسامتى البلهاء , تردد نظرها بينى و بين اللوحة , شعرت بخيبة أمل أطلقتها فى تنهيدة حزينة حارة مازالت تلهب جبينى , رحلت و لم تأت ثانية .
شعرت برعشة اسقطت الفرشاة من يدى , انحنيت لالتقطها فاختلطت الألوان فقد كل لون وجوده و ذاب فى وجود الألوان الأخرى , لا يهم سارسم نفسى الأن بأى لون أيا ً كان , و لكن أين اضع نفسى ؟ فى المنتصف سأكون قريبا ً من كل شى ء , و لكنها فى طرف اللوحة " ارسم نفسك بجوارها إنك تفعل كل هذا من أجلها " .

حسنا ً, انا الأن فى لوحتى بالقرب منها , لا شىء تغير ما زلت لا أراها و ما زالت حياتى كما هى , لا فرق إلا هذا اللون الغريب الذى رسمت به نفسى , إنه يسيطر على اللوحة , طرد كل الألوان على الإطار الذهبى , لن أزيله و ليحدث ما يحدث , لن أزيله مع أنه دهس جسدها الجميل و ألقى به على الأرض , لن أزيله مع أنه هو الذى دمر حياتى , كيف أزيله و هو حياتى و ليس اللوحة فلتذهب اللوحة للجحيم و يبقى لون روحى .





Thursday, June 4, 2009

3 in 1 xampp = PHP + MySQL + Apache

Hi every one,
Well I was assigned to build a web site that uses php and MySQL to register users
who will be students and professors and show them courses and other options.
Any way, I needed to setup all of php, MySQL and Apache (as a server). I looked up on the internet and it wasn't that easy. Yes you will download the three of them easily as they are all free, but it will need a lot of work in order to integrate them with each other and run them.
In order to get rid of all of these nasty stuff, all you have to do is to download and install a package called xampp whih includes all the above tools and it is very easy to install and use as well.

Here are the steps to have your own server where you can build a database and PHP files:

1 - You have to download xampp, it is open source so you will find the suitable version for your machine. just go to xampp home page

2 - Choose the version that suits your operating system - xampp is avaliable for Windows, Linux, MAC and Solaris -

3 - You can download the installer or the zip or the exe. I recommend the installer, it is easy and safe, also it is only 35 MB.




4 - Run the installation normally, it would be better not to install it in C because you may get bothered for security options on Vista.

5 - After the installation is done, go to the folder where you installed xampp, run the xammp controller



6 - You should have a window like this:



7 - If the Apache server is not runing, just click on start, do the same for mysql in case you need it.



You will find it on your tool bar





8 - Now it is all set for us to run the server, just go to your internet browser
and tyoe this in the address bar:
http://localhost/xampp/index.php

If you have the same as this then every thing is set you can build your own php NOW.




9 - Now let's build our site:

- Make a new folder that should contain all the pages, we will name it MyWeb

You have to make this new folder as a subfolder in the folder named htdocs you can find this folder in the folder where you installed xampp.



- download this file called firsPage.php

Put firstPage.php in the folder MyWeb that we created at the previous step.

10 - Write this url in your address bar
http://localhost/MyWeb/firstPage.php
and click Enter

Yes you just did it !!



If you have any comments or questions, don't hesitate


HOPE THIS HELPED, THANKS FOR READING

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Saving Energy




Hi everyone,
While I was surfing on the internet, I found a very interesting site, it calls you to join them on their cause for saving energy.

You must have heard people talking about this matter many times before, but I doubt that it ever caught your interest or made you really change your habits or adapt new habits that would save energy.

This web site is REALLY different, it is very exciting and brings you to the core of the problem, it shows you how you by changing your habits and adapting new ones would change things in numbers. For instance, it shows you how much money you would save if you go to your work on a bike three days a week, it also tells you how much the equivalent energy saved by you can do in other fields (like charging your laptop or providing a hospital with energy).

The nicest thing in the site is the game, yes you can play a game where you have a city in 2015 and you have to provide it with enough energy, you get to choose between all sources: nuclear, hydro, natural gas, etc. Anyway, you have to watch out for three meters: Economic, Environmental and Security, you have to balance the three meters to get the highest score, it is really nice and will teach you something as well.

Go to the site here
To play the game choose energy ville.
If you want to see how much you can save here

Saturday, May 23, 2009

47 million years old OMG !!






Hi everyone,
You must have heard of the evolution theory, that theory that suggests that creatures actually were mainly very primitve lives, which by time - I mean here millions of millions of years - evolved into creatures that you say all around.

This theory includes human beings !!. I believe it is silly because human has been created by Allah as human. He may have been bigger and different from now but surely he was a human.

Anyway, scientists have found a 47 million years old fossil that they claim as one of the early human ancestors - A phase on the evolution journey -
As I said earlier, I wouldn't take it that this fossil is one of my great great grand mothers as they say in the report. but surely, it is someone's else grand mother !!

The great thing about this fossil that it is perfectly preserved, you can see all the details of the body even some fur can be located !!
The great condition of the fossil - 95% compelete - can be justified by the fact that it was found in a place which is believed to have been a lake where gazes and liquids existed which helped preserving this fossil along with other thousand fossils of animals and fishes.


It is very interesting see a look at the BBC for more details .








These are other videos from Youtube


Video One
Video Two

الطنين



الطنين


سئمت من سماع الأغانى المتشابهة التى حفظتها عن ظهر قلب , كما أنى لا أريد أن استمع إلى نشرات الأخبار ، فلقد سمعتها عشرات المرات , هل استمع إلى إذاعة القرآن الكريم , لكنى لا أريد أن أنافق نفسى .
على أية حال , أدرت المؤشر دون أن أعلم إلى أين سأذهب به أو سيذهب بى . توقفت فجأة لأستمع لهذا الطنين المستمر الذى يتواجد بين المحطات . لأول مرة يجذب انتباهى .
أوقفت المؤشر , بدأت أنصت لهذا التناغم المثالى الذى لا يتوقف .
لماذا لا يهتم به أحد ؟ هل لأنه لا يمتلك صوتا ً خاصا ً به , أليست هذه " الوشوشة " صوتا ً مميزا ً , حتى و إن كان لا يمتلك صوتا ً خاصا ً
ربما يريد من كل ٍ منا أن يبنى محطته الخاصة فى هذا الفراغ ... فى هذا الصمت ذى الصوت العالى , أن يسمع فيها ما يحب و أن يقول فيها ما يريد , و ألا يترك كلام الأخرين يغزو عقله و كيانه أو يأسر روحه .
أردت أن أشعر الطنين أنى أفهمه , وأنى سأنفذ وصيته التى يصرخ بها و هو يتلاشى فى الفراغ . أطفأت أنوار الغرفة عدا نور الأباجورة , أسندت ظهرى للخلف , أغلقت عينى , و بدأت أنسج من هذا الطنين ثوب حياتى بكل ما فيه من مزقات و بكل ما عليه من أقذار .
عندما انتهيت أحضرت ورقة و قلم , و أخذت أرقع الثوب بالكلمات و الحروف , و انتزع الأوساخ بالصفات و النعوت .
لم أتوقف إلا بعد أن نفذ العمر من قلمى و اكتمل الكمال على ورقتى .
علقت حياتى الكاملة على الحائط , و بداخلى شعور بالرضا , و أنا
أضيىء الأنوار , و أعيد المؤشر لأقرب محطة لأستكمل حياتى بثوبى المرقع .
حقا ً , شكرا ً لك أيها الطنين .

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Famous thieves !!

Hi everyone,
I was listening to BBC Extra on BBC Arabic radio - It's a very nice show - any way they were talking about copyrights and how much they are protected in the Arab world.
They talked about a site that some one made, this site tries to show you very famous writers who actually stole some wrtings from the Internet or from else where and published these writings under their name. There are also posters of actors and singers. Even cartoon drawn has been stolen by some artists.

The matchs are so identical that no one can say that it is a coincidence.

If you are interested visit the site and you will be amazed !!

What is this part of the blog?

Hi everyone,
In this part I will be talking about any thing interesting that I heard about. ofcourse your comments are welcomed.

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Writing and Appending

Hi everyone,
When you are programming, you will need to store data on files. some times you want to discard all the contents of the file and write all the data right from the beginning, and other times you want to add just a line to the data in file.

The first type is called writing while the second one is named appending. The default when you create a FileWriter in JAVA it will overwrite all the data in the file.


FileWriter writer = new FileWriter("sample.txt");
writer.write("Trying writing in file");
writer.close();


If you run this code, the FileWriter "writer" will delete all lines in "sample.txt" and write from the beginning of the file. If the file doesn't exist it will be created and the "writer" will write in it.
Note:
1 - You must always close any input or output streams in order to perform appropriate operations.
2 - You will have to import java packages:

import java.io.FileWriter;
import java.io.IOException;

3 - You will have to throw or try and catch IOException.




Let's see the appending.
Try this code


FileWriter writer = new FileWriter("sample.txt");
writer.write("The first line was deleted");
writer.close();


You will find only one sentence "The first line was deleted", the other sentence we wrote on the first coding doesn't exist any more. Sometimes there is no problem with that, but what if you want to add the new line with out deleting the already written one ?

To answer the question try this thing:


FileWriter writer = new FileWriter("sample.txt", true);
writer.write("\nThe first line was not deleted");
writer.close();


The true that we added to the constructor means that we want the FileWriter to append the new data to the existing data.

These Images will show every thing


Writing in the file:




Overwriting the data in the file:




Appending to the file:








Well that's all for now, See soon isa.

What is this part of the blog?

Hi everyone,
In this part of the blog I will try to provide you with some tips on coding on Java. I am no expert but I will be publishing small snippets that are easy but maybe you don't know still they can be very helpful and usefull.
Thanks,
Khaled Abd Al Hady @ CSD

Friday, March 6, 2009

صورة جيفارا





صورة جيفارا


صورة جيفارا .... هذه الصورة التى شعرت دائماً نحوها بانجذاب شديد , وجدتها هذه المرة على إحدى عربات الميكروباص, سألت نفسى لماذا و ضعها السائق على عربته إنه غالباً لا يعلم من هو جيفارا .. لا يعلم تاريخ نضاله و كفاحه.و لكنى عندما دققت النظر فى الصورة عرفت الإجابة. عيناه تنظران إلى أعلى تستشرفان المستقبل ... تستمدان من نور الشمس الحماسة حتى و إن جاء الليل تستمدان من نور القمر الأمل ... من سكون الليل الصبر ... من نجوم السماء ذلك البريق الآخاذ. و هذا البيريه العسكرى البسيط الذى يعبر عن الجندية بكل ما تحمله من معانى الانضباط و الإخلاص و الجدية , و من تحته يتهادى شعر أسود متموج لتكتمل بذلك ملامح رجل لاتينى أصيل. فجأة تحركت العربة و عيون المارة معلقة بالصورة يحسون أنها تدعوهم إلى شىء لم يألفوه ... إنها الثورة.

لا تقل و لكن





لا تقل و لكن

رأيتها.. و هى تخط بأقلام
آيات النثر
رأيتها.. تكتب بأحرف من ذهب
أبيات الشعر
رأيتها.. ترسم بأزهى ألوان
لوحة العمر

سألتها.. كيف تمدحين العدل؟!
و الظلم عليه منتصرٌ
سألتها.. كيف تكتبين أشعار الحب؟!
و البغض عليه مقتدرٌ
سألتها.. كيف ترسمين الجمال ؟!
و القبح حولك منتشرٌ

قالت: ألا يكفيك عدل ربك؟!
ألا يكفيك حب زوجك؟!
ألا يكفيك جمال أرضك؟!
قلت: بلى و لكن...
قالت: لا تقل و لكن
و انظر حولك و آمن
بأن ربك خير قاضٍٍٍ
قلت: و زو جى..
يكفيك منه أنه غير خائنٍ
قلت: و أرضى..
ألا تطعمك حين تجوع؟!
و تكسيك إن كنت عارٍ؟!
قلت: بلى و لكن..
قالت: لا تقل و لكن
إن كنت لا تصدقنى
فاسأل السماء و الأرض
أغير الله إلهًٌ؟
و اسأل النجوم و الأقمار
أأجمل من زوجك كائنٌ؟
و اسأل الطير و الزهور
أخير من أرضك أرضٌ؟
قلت: صدقتِ
اسقينى من علمك كأسا
قالت: لو أن الغيب معلومٌ
و حجابه عنى مكشوفٌٍ
لأخبرتك
قلت : زيدينى كأساً
قالت: شر الأسقام سقم فى القلب
لا يداويه الزمن
شر الأحلام حلم كالوهم
بك يهوى
شر الأيام يوم يمر دون
أن تدرى
أخيرأ قدمت فيه أم شرأً؟
قلت : زيدينى كأساً
قالت: كثر سؤالك فاذهب عنى
حاجزٌ بينك و بينى
قلت : بم؟
قالت: بأنى مؤمنة؟
قلت : ألست بمؤمن مثلكِ؟
قالت: بلى و لكن...
قلت : لا تقولى و لكن
إن ربى غفارٌ للذنب
و أنا تائبٌ
أنا إنسانٌ
و كل إنسان خطاءٌ
ألست بإنسانة مثلى؟
قالت: بلى و لكن...
قلت : لا تقولى و لكن
و لا تأمرينى أن أكون ملاكاً
و سط الشياطين
و لا تأمرينى أن أقدم الخير
و حولى أرى الشر
قالت: ها أنت عن الحق تحيد
صدقت فى قولك الأول
و باعدت الصواب فى الثانى
أحس فى قلبك داء
أفتح لى عليه باباً
لعلى أجد له دواء
قلت : صدقتى
سأمت الحياة و كآبة أيامها
سأمت من البرية و سوء أخلاقها
سأمت من أصحو كل يومٍ
فأرى فى كل عينٍ
أنهار الدموع
أن أرقب فى عجزٍ
انطفاء الشموع

طال الظلام فأين الأنوار؟
أين أحلامى التى رسمتها
يوماً على الأشجار؟
و كتبت اسمى و اسمها
على الأحجار
و أقسمنا ألا تفرق بيننا
أمواج البحار
و ها أنا ذا أقف على الشاطىء
وحيداً... تائهاً... أصرخ
فلا تجيبينى إلا الأطيار
بصراخٍ تلعننى
لأني ضيعت حلمى
قالت: هون عليك أخى
دواؤك عند ربك
ألا بذكر الله تطمأن القلوب

لوحة الخوف






لوحة الخوف




كل شىء فى هذه الليلة بدا خائفا ً و مخيفا ً فى نفس الوقت , حتى القمر توارى خلف السحاب خوفا ً أن تطيح به الأرض بعيدا ًعن محبوبته الأرض , الكلاب الضالة استقرت على جانبى الطريق بعد أن كبلتها قيود البرد , و أخذت تحك أجسادها بالأرض من شدة الجوع لكن هذا لم يمنعها أن تخيف المارة بنظرات من أعينها اللامعة فيسرعون الخطى ليراهم ذلك المصباح المتهالك أشباحا ً فيهتز يمينا ً و يسارا ًيرقب ما حوله فى خوف و ذعر.

أما أنا فكنت خائفا ً من كل شىء , من القمر يذكرنى بوحدتى , الرياح تذكرنى بضعفى , الكلاب تذكرنى بأعدائى حتى المصباح المتهالك ذكرنى بأملى الضعيف.

الشيء الوحيد الذي لم يكن خائفا ً هو ذلك المتشرد الذي استلقى على الأرض, أحسست أن شيئا ً يدفعني لإخافته حتى تكتمل لوحة الخوف. اقتربت منه محاولا ً إزعاجه بأقصى قدر ممكن شعرت بالانتصار عندما رأيته يعتدل في جلسته ليسند ظهره إلى جدار خلفه , أكملت طريقي كأني لم أفعل شيئا ً.

بعد أن جاوزته بقليل, صرخ في: "أعطني ما في جيبك" لن أنكر أنه أخافني أكثر مما أخفته أنا , كان من الممكن أن أتجاهله , و لكنى لم أكن مستعدا ً لأية مشاكل , فاستدرت واضعا ً يدي في جيبي لألقى له بعض النقود ليتركني و شأني , لكنه صرخ في بأعلى صوته: "أعنى الجيب الأخر" . يا إلهي كيف عرف أن الجيب الأخر يحتوى هذه القلادة الثمينة. أخرجتها في يأس ٍ و وضعتها بين يديه العفنة, لا أعلم لماذا ربما لأني أردت التخلص منها من قبل و لكنى لم أمتلك الشجاعة. أخذ يقلبها بين يديه يضحك ضحكات قصيرة تتخللها شهقات بكاء أحسست بحرارتها رغم برودة الجو. دفعها إلي قائلا ً: "إنها أجمل مما توقعت" . جذبتها سريعا ً من بين يديه قبل أن يغير رأيه, و بعد أن جاوزته بقليل أخرج قلادة أشد جمالا ً من قلادتي.زاد هذا خوفي من القلادة و من صاحبة الصورة بداخلها .