Ubuntu 11.04 review

Every one was waiting for Ubuntu 11.04, because of the new Unity interface which is totally different from the Gnome, well Ubuntu 11.04 was just released yesterday and I installed it on my machine so I thought I could write what I think of it:

Installation is getting better this version:

1. The interface is better
2. Auto detect of existing Ubuntu installation, so you can just upgrade.
3. Auto detect of existing Ubuntu installation, so you can overwrite it instead of manually choosing the partitions.
4. Ability to download upgrades and MP3 plugins during installation to save time

A better looking grub loader ( it is not in 10.04 I don't know if it was there in 10.10 or not)

Unity :)

Generally it is just great, I think people were scared that it would not be simple as much as GNOME is or it will have performance issues, but I can tell you it is simple and light.

Still I am not really satisfied with the default applications like Banshee instead of Rythmbox, but it seems like the new Libre Office is better than Open Office, anyway you can install and uninstall whatever you want, you can even remove Unity and install GNOME if you don't like it.

Best thing is that you can access things easily and faster because Unity offers suggestions for you when you open the menu.

Few things I don't like about Unity is that it is not as customizable as GNOME where you could add and edit panels, but I think more developers will provide applets that can be used with Unity.

Ubuntu software center:

You now can review apps and write comments about the applications.

Radio Tray

Just found a great application for listening to Internet Radios on Ubuntu

Go there and download it http://radiotray.sourceforge.net/

then you can easily add radio stations to the radio

check this link

Some radios stream using codecs that Ubuntu doesn't support by default so you will have to install them using

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

One more thing if you have Unity you need to enable the radio tray applet indicator just do as here.

راجع نفسك

أنا: قطب هو التاريخ كام النهاردة ؟؟
قطب: يا عم التاريخ على ورقة الإجابة
أنا: يالا بينا 13 أنا مش متفائل يا عم
قطب: إيه ده النهارده 13!! ده رقم مميز و بريم ... جابر شوفت النهاردة 13
أنا (فى سرى): 13 13 يا عم الناس بتعوض فى بيتها ... الدور الأول ... يارب استر

ده الحوار البرىء اللى دار بينى و بين قطب قبل ما ورقة الأسئلة تنزل بالسلامة, أنا مش هكلم عن الأمتحان لأنه بجد مفيش كلام ينفع يتقال عنه , هوا حاجة كدا تتحس
الموضوع و ما فيه إن الواحد بعد اللى حصل فيه راجع نفسه و قال يا عم أنا عاليا بإيه كل ده, أنا أسيب الكلية وأجيب خروفين و معزة و أطلع سواح فى البلاد و أعيش فى الصحرا و أبقى الراقص مع الخرفان
حسيت أنى بهيس بقول كدا لسعد لقيتوا بيقولى إنوا فكر نفس التفكير و هو بدل الجو بتاع المعيز و الخرفان عاوز يطلع مذيع كرة يروح الحياة يروح مودرن يعمل الكورة مع سعد
لما سألت شكس بقى جاوبنى إجابة قوية ... قالك: عاوز أبقى بلبل سقعان
يا ريت كل واحد (أكيد حسيت النهارده الاحساس ده) يقول نفسك تتجه لأيه ؟؟؟


 Eminem و فى النهاية أفتكر كلمات الشاعر الكبير
 Lose Yourself فى رائعته
وهو بيقول


His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy
There's vomit on his sweater already, mom's spaghetti
He's nervous, but on the surface he looks calm and ready to drop bombs,
but he keeps on forgettin what he wrote down,
the whole crowd goes so loud
He opens his mouth, but the words won't come out

He's choking now, everybody's joking now

The clock's run out, time's up over, bloah!

Snap back to reality, Oh there goes gravity

Oh, there goes Rabbit, he choked

He's so mad, but he won't give up that

Easy, no

Digital investigation

I don't know if you heard about it or not but US government has asked Twitter to hand over data concerning WikiLeaks activists, you may say how on earth they can do such thing ?? well it comes out that they have the right to do so, Twitter and other social networking sites are not allowed to disclose our information but there are conditions under which they can (actually have to) release your data, in fact you should think of it as you go to a club regularly and the cops want to investigate you, it is their full right to go in there and ask if any one knows your phone number or address and no one would say this is not right , well it is the same thing, they have the right to take any data on any social networking site.
I guess that means we should REALLY read the privacy of every site we use :D

Law and Harm: We may disclose your information if we believe that it is reasonably necessary to comply with a law, regulation or legal request; to protect the safety of any person; to address fraud, security or technical issues; or to protect Twitter's rights or property.

       Quoted from Twitter's privacy policy.

Do you think our digital information should have more protection ?

CSD Forum Notification

In order to follow up with all the CSD forum new posts I made nice little app in Python that would notify you of any new posts and opens them all in your browser with one click


You can download it from here 

I will show you here how to install it and use it

Before you download the application you need to install python (in case you don't already have it) and python-gnome extra from the synaptic package manager

you will download the file forum.rar after extracting it to any where in your computer, use your command line to run it ... in case you don't know here it is I have the folder in my Desktop

And here it is telling me that there are no new posts

You will have to enter your user name and password only the first time after that the cookies are stored in file called cookies.txt in the same folder ... you will not have to enter your username and password every time you want.

The application will check for any thing new every 15 mins

If there are any new posts then it will tell you

You can click the CSD icon in the panel up there which will open the new posts in your default browser

If you want to see NOW if there are any new posts you can click the CSD icon it will tell if there are any click on it again to open the posts

If you have no internet connection the application will tell you that it is unable to check for you

One last thing if you want to shut it off ... just right click on the icon up in the panel that will do it :D

Please try it and tell me about any issues ... because the code is bad and needs refactoring ... I will try to add other options soon isA

You can download it from here 

w n7eb nshokr 3bas 3la tshge3o lya :D :D

Fe Net ??!!

Bsfty w7ed el router bta3o mzwlo 3la tool beb2a fi wireless bs mafesh net .... w bsfty bardo btzwel fi el kolya bsbab el net el wahmy ely te3mel connect bs mosh yb2a fi net ... 2olt badal m3od aft7 el terminal w akteb ping w bta3 a3mel 7aga zarefa keda

el mohem ana 3mlt python script 7ker keda lma te3mel run y2om 2ylk fi el notifications area bta3t Ubuntu lw fi net aw mafesh

ana 3mlt launcher bardo fo2 fi el panel ynady el python script 3la tool`

You can find the script on my Ubuntu one space here
tell me if there is something wrong with it (there has to be as I cooked it :D)

dah example

try:
    import pynotify
    if pynotify.init("My Application Name"):
        n = pynotify.Notification("Title", "message")
        n.show()
    else:
        print "there was a problem initializing the pynotify module"
except:
    print "you don't seem to have pynotify installed"

ady el shots

keda fi net

lw b2a fi wireless bs mafesh net

lw b2a 7drtk zaky w b test w aslan mosh 3amel connect l2y network

CStack

I just added a stack implementation in C to the project on source forge, I will change its name but it seems that source forge has some problems with that :D
I will isA add other data structures
Wish me Good luck in my exams !!!

C dynamic list

I have been following a programming course that is on Stanford University channel on You tube, it's really nice, and I made that implementation of a generic dynamic list in C, I put it on source forge, so you can have look it and tell me if there is any thing wrong with it :)

CList on source forge.

Mercurial

Sometimes you miss up your code with some changes that cause it not to work and you are unable to remember what you did or even worse not able to recover what you deleted, that's way their is something called Source Control, this helps you keep different versions of your projects, so you can just move between them without losing any thing, there are many stuff that do Source Control like cvs or svn, any way I came across something called Mercurial which seemed a nice thing to write about.
The guide is really good and simple, but I am gonna explain things little bit more and with some examples.

Installation

You can install Mercurial easily by typing sudo apt-get install mercurial in your terminal if you don't already have it, you also need to create a file name .hgrc in your home directory, Mercurial uses this file as your preferences, so you type your user name, and your preferred editor (ex. nano, vim or emacs).
my .hgrc file looks like this

[ui]

editor = nano

username = Khaled Hady

Creating a Repository

The first thing we need to do is to create a repository which is like telling Mercurial this folder is where I work and I want you to keep tracking any changes that I do.
If you already have a folder where your projects are then you will write two commands, let's say that my project is in a folder called Test in my home directory, and I have only one file "main.c" in it, that I want to keep track of.

I used cd to go to Test folder, then I used hg init to initiate a repository. I typed hg add because I want ALL the files to be tracked, if you want only some files to be tracked use

$ hg add first.c third.c

where first.c and third.c are the files you want to keep track of.
I also used the hg status command to know which files I am following and which I am not.

I used the nano command to edit the main file by adding few lines, then I added a new source file named newFile.c

After that I use hg diff to show the differences between the current version and the data in the files I am tracking, it tells me that there have been changes, so I type hg commit to make a new version that maintains the changes I made, and I am asked to type a comment which is important so I can keep track of my changes.

Now accidently, I changed the "newFile.c" and wrote some stupid code, then I commited the version so now I have two versions (0 and 1), I want my old version back (version 0)

first I will type hg log to see what each commit did in the project (so you must write reasonable words when you write the comment of the commit), then I will type hg update 0, I typed 0 cause I want to go to the first version which is zero, also you can use hg update tip to go to the latest version whatever it is.

Now the files are the same in version 0.

there is also a command called hg identify -n which tells you on which version you are now, if it has the form [num]+ (ex. 3+) this means you made changes to the version number 3 but hasn't commited these changes.


That's for now, there are other commands that we can talk about later.

الفندق

أسف على التأخير فى تكملة ما بدأنا سويا ً عن سيوة , ليس هناك الكثير ليقال عن الفندق , كل ما استطيع أن أقوله أنه جيد و نظيف و يبدو أنه يتعامل مع أفواج فى أغلب الأوقات , الفوج يحتل طابقين , كل طابق يحتوى على حوالى 10 إلى 15 غرفة , و الغرفة تحتوى على 3 أسرة , الشىء الذى لاحظته أن عمال الفندق و هم بالطبع من أهل سيوة يأخذون عملهم بجدية عالية التى تتحول أحيانا ً إلى جفاء , لكن الشىء الجيد أنهم يتركونك فى حالك , فلا يحملقون فى الزوار و لا ينتظرون البقشيش.

بعد أن استرحنا بضعة ساعات , ذهبنا لعين اسمها "عين فنطاس" أو "فطناس" لا أتذكر, المهم أنى كنت متحمس أن أعرف ما هو مفهوم "العين" كنت أظن أنها مجرد فتحة "خرم" فى الأرض تخرج منها المياه , هذا التصور الساذج بالتأكيد كان خاطئا ً و اكتشفت أن العين هى شىء أشبه ببئر إذا نظرت فيه تستطيع رؤية فقاقيع و المياه تكون دافئة لأنها خارجة من باطن الأرض , عين فنطاس هذه كانت أصغر من عين كليوبترا التى زرناها فيما بعد.

جلسنا حتى الغروب على بحيرة ناتجة من الصرف الزراعى لكنها نظيفة و لا توجد روائح كريهة , شربنا شاى و استمتعنا بالمكان ثم عدنا إلى الفندق.

 

 

Between pages and screens

Many novels have been turned into movies but not vice versa, this mostly takes from the novel more than it gives, even financially a person would buy a ticket rather than buying a book, but any way the authors get millions of dollars so there is no need to worry about them :D.

When a novel is turned into a movie, the movie will have two types of audience: people that read the novel and people who haven't, clearly the second type will be larger that's why the director will try to reach and satisfy them more than the first type, this leads to you watching something totally different from what you expect (in case you are of the unfortunate first type).

I just been to Sherlock Holmes by Robert Downey and Jude Law, the movie is great from the perspective of a person that never read any of Sherlock Holmes cases, but when I recall the cases and the voices (as Sherlock Holmes was presented by the BBC Radio in sixtieth) I see Sherlock Holmes as a man in his late fourties or early fifties, maybe in a good shape but not so athlete, we can say quite fat with a moustache, and as I hear the strong sound of Dr Watson, I see him similar to Sherlock Holmes but little older maybe, and with a full rounded face, a typical gentleman of London in the 19th century, well all this "imagination" of mine might be what Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wanted the reader to say or maybe not, but I am quite sure that while he was writing he never thought of Sherlock and Watson as two men destroying London while they are chasing criminals like the movie put them, actually the movie made them closer to cowboys rather than gentlemen of the 19th living in London, when you read any of the cases, you will rarely see the kind of extensive force and action that existed in the movie.

This surely puts the largest part of the audience in great satisfaction as they watch the two men jump, hit and make jokes, and they will surely enjoy Sherlock's mad acts and expressions, which doesn't match with the cases, maybe he was a little bit "weird" and unorganized but not a lunatic that is closer to insanity than geniosity.

Anyway as the director wants ALL the audience satisfied, he will make up with you be emphasising on details that might not be of importance but they were in the original Sherlock Holmes like: the address of the rooms where Sherlock and Dr.Watson lived which is 221 Baker Street, the names of the landlady "Miss.Hudson" and the detective "Lastrade". These things could have been ignored without disturbing you but the director kept them, just to tell you "hey man don't be upset this is still Sherlock Holmes of Sir Arthur".

I guess the same thing happened with "Angels and Demons" of Dan Brown and "The Twilight Saga" by Stephenie Meyer, on the other hand stories like "Troy" and "300 Spartians" were sent to life again by movies.

So what do you think about novels turning into movies.

 

Statue of Sherlock Homes in Edinburgh

A Drawing of Sherlock Holmes

 

Dr.Watson (left) and Holmes (right)

The ALL NEW Holmes and Watson

 

COOL isn't it? :D :D

جبل الموتى

من الغريب أن تبدأ زيارتك للواحة بجبل يسمى جبل "الموتى" , و لكن هذا ما حدث فبعد أن وصلنا حوالى الساعة العاشرة صباحا ً اتجهنا إلى هذا الجبل الذى سمى بهذا الاسم لأن سكان الوحة القدامى كانوا من الفراعنة و كانوا يدفنون موتاهم فى هذا الجبل , ما استغربه هو لماذا تركوا الوادى و ذهبوا إلى هذه الواحة ليسكنوا فيها أم أن هذه المسافة كانت مأهولة بالسكان ؟ المهم أنهم لم يمتلكوا رفاهية بناء الأهرامات فاستخدموا الجبال المنتشرة بكثرة حول الواحة ليحفروا فيها سراديب لدفن الموتى , أحدهم يدعى سى - آمون , لم أتمكن من دخول المقبرة لأنها كانت صغيرة و عددنا كان كبيرا ً .
 
من فوق هذا الجبل استطيع أن أصف  لك منظرا ً عاما ً للواحة , فهى محاطة بعدد من الجبال التى شكلتها الأمطار على مدار ألاف السنين على هيئة مخاريط يمكن تسلقها بدون معدات , الجبال ليست عالية و ربما كلمة تلال الوصف الأدق لها , هذا على الأفق البعيد أما إذا نظرت قريبا ً فسترى عددا ً من البحيرات ذات شواطىء مهجورة , لست متأكدا ً إذا كانت هذه البحيرات عذبة أم أنها ناتجة عن صرف زراعى , أما سفح الجبل فهو محاط ببيوت بسيطة أغلبها يتكون من طابق واحد , الشىء العجيب فعلا ً الذى لاحظته طوال الرحلة أن البيوت فى سيوة هادئة بشكل غير عادى حتى تشعر أنها مجرد مقابر كالتى تمتلأ بها الجبال . هذه البيوت تفصل مجموعات ضخمة من النخيل المتشابك حتى أنك لا تستطيع أن ترى نخلة دون أن ترى معاها 5 نخلات !!

الطريق

ركبنا الأتوبيس بعد منتصف الليل بقليل بعد عدة محاولات "لدفس" الشنط فى أماكنها , لن أنكر أنى كنت خائفا ً من الطريق خاصة أننا سنسافر وسط الصحراء فى الشتاء فى ظلام الليل , أضف إلى ذلك أن مناطق فى سيناء و أسوان تعرضت لسيول قوية قبل السفر بعدة أسابيع , لكن الحمد لله لم تحدث مشاكل سوى أن الأتوبيس الثانى تعطل عدة مرات و تم استبداله فى النهاية .

الطريق من الأسكندرية إلى سيوة نستطيع أن نقسمه إلى جزئين رئيسين : الجزء الأول هو الاتجاه غربا ً من الأسكندرية فى طريق مرسى مطروح أما الجزء الثانى فالاتجاه جنوبا ً فى اتجاه الواحة , لا أتذكر بالضبط كم كانت المسافة الكلية ( لم ألحظ اللافتات لأننا سافرنا بالليل ) و لكنى متأكد أنها كانت طويلة , و للأسف لست من النوع الذى ينام فى المواصلات و لكنى بعد أن التهمت 7 ساندويتشات شاورمة و قطعتين بيتزا تونة ( يمنكنك تخيل رائحة فمى ) و بعد محاولات عديدة و تجربة كل أوضاع النوم من ضم الأرجل أو ثنيها و سند الرأس للخلف أو للأمام تمكنت من النوم لأوقات قصيرة متقطعة .  الشىء الذى أغاظنا جميعا ً هو أن مصطفى مشرى أحد زملائنا نام تقريبا ً طوال المسافة دون أى إنزعاج كأنه فى سريره بينما نحن نكاد نجن من أجل نصف ساعة من الراحة !!

واحة الغروب

بعد انتهاء فصل دراسى أول أقل ما يمكن أن يقال عنه أنه "غريب" (ربما نتحدث عنه لاحقا ً) قررت أنا و 9 من زملائى بالقسم الذهاب إلى سيوة فى رحلة نظمتها الكلية , خلال هذه الرحلة سجلت مجموعة من المشاهدات التى أريد أن أحدثكم عنها.

Clean Your Grub !!

If you are an Linux user, you must be familiar with the kernel updates (especially when you download a cut edge version), those updates are important and surely we do them, but the problem shows up when you find your grub full of kernels ( a kernel version + recovery), this happened to me I had 4 kernels with 4 recovery and another memory check, add to that I have Windows 7, so actually I had 10 items in my grub menu which makes it looks like a start menu :D, so I searched for a way to solve that problem, and I found this link ... it's very good, I tried it my self and removed two kernels and left two for safety, just follow the instructions but be careful coz you are missing with your kernel here!!

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.

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.

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.

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 !!

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 !