January, 2012 | Elyas Thinks...

Archive | January, 2012

TRA Releases Market Indicators for 2011

Elyas Kashfi / January 30, 2012 / Bahrain, Technology / Permalink

The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (aka TRA) of Bahrain has today released market indicators covering the period between the last quarter of 2010 to 2011. It is quite an interesting read, especially since it covers an important period of time in Bahrain. Some of the information that may be found in this report are: market trends, telecoms revenue, telecoms employment and overview of different services amongst others. It may be downloaded from the TRA's website here.

Here are some of the stuff I found interesting:

The mobile market provides 44% of market revenue. Followed by international calls (23%), Internet services are before last at only 13%.
The telecoms market represented 4.4% of GDP in 2010.
There are 2,600 direct jobs in the telecoms market (2010). I thought it was much more! I'm guessing outsourcing does not count since it might be a market of "services"?
By the end of 2011 there were 1.7 million mobile subscribers. That's 133% of penetration.
Due to Viva's calls offer, minutes increased by 86% in 2010.
Blackberry represents only 6% of the market. 99% of my friends and family are in these 6%….!
Broadband penetration in 2011 was 23%.
Mobile broadband consists of 44% of the broadband market.
A whopping 95% of households have broadband! The estimates of other countries for 2012 is: South Korea (97%), Netherlands (82%) and the US (77%).
22,000 (22 thousand) numbers have been ported between providers since MNP (Mobile Number Portability) was launched in July 2011.

Much more can be found in the report. Get it here.

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Skyrim: A Game Worth Every Penny!

Elyas Kashfi / January 26, 2012 / Review, Software / Permalink

I'm not a hardcore gamer, neither am I too casual. I'm more of an in-between gamer, If I get the chance I would spend hours upon hours playing something, or spend some time doing other stuff and game. My platform of choice: the PS3 (The Sony PlayStation 3 for serious non-gamers ), after all "it only does everything" (credits to Sony).

When it comes to game genres, I really have no preference. However, I do prefer games that are visually appealing and most importantly is playable for a significantly long time. If you take these two criterions into consideration, there aren't that many games that fit. For example, the GOW series is amazing, just go in and slash everything, however it is possible to finish over a single session. I also do have interests in simulation games, whether it is cars (GT5 for example) or fighter planes (Ace Combat and HAWX) since they can get pretty dynamic.

The last game I bought (at a bad time, week before finals!) was The Elders Scroll 5: Skyrim, simple known as Skyrim, by Bethesda. It is an open world game, basically you just roam around doing quests and interact with NPCs (non-player characters). Typical RPG you may think. But no, they went to great lengths to make a game that in some cases can be quite unpredictable, thanks to the Radiant AI system. Through dialog you can change the outcome of missions, receive a different reward and so on.

The main story, without spoilers is about dragons. The player is a special person, with special powers (search for "fus ro dah" videos). The story is quite short, but you have quite A LOT quests not related to the main story line. You end up playing a game that might as well have no end if you truly want to play it thoroughly! I actually read somewhere that mentioned the devs clocked 300 hours of game play and just stopped because they didn't feel like counting more. Not surprised.

If you want to find out more… BUY THE GAME!

PS: For PS3 users suffering from lag, freeze etc… Disabling all auto-saves, deleting those auto-saves and saving manually instead worked. I froze only a couple of times since making these changes (rather than every 10 or so travel/loads).

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Linux Mint a Potential Keeper

Elyas Kashfi / January 23, 2012 / Review, Software, Technology / Permalink

On my quest to find a Linux OS good and friendly enough for me to use on a daily basis, I decided to revisit some of my previous installations. There were a few I knew I wouldn't want to try again such as Ubuntu (Unity just messed up my experience, my mother loves it for some reason…), Fedora (more of a dev Linux in terms of release) and CentOS (the closest to RHEL, but not really fitting for a laptop) just to name a few. I went back to Distrowatch to look over their list to see if I could find something else. I noticed Mint (or Linux Mint) was ranked at number 1 (at the time of writing). This must be something good I thought. I went on ahead and started the download of Linux Mint 12.

In the meantime I did some research. It uses Gnome 3 with an additional minty layer called MGSE (NOT THE GAME!): Mint Gnome Shell Extensions. If you happen to be one of those that just hate Gnome 3 regardless, there is an interface called MATE which is simply a fork of Gnome 2. It is still Ubuntu on the inside so you have the usual pre-installed to get you going. Drivers for my wireless card also worked, just like Ubuntu, out-of-the-box. A complete list of new features in Mint 12 is here.

If you are looking for a new Linux distro to try that is user friendly (to you and others) I highly recommend Mint! For now it seems like I may have found the OS to replace Windows on my laptop !

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Duck Duck Go a Google Contender?

Elyas Kashfi / January 22, 2012 / Internet, Review, Technology / Permalink

On my quest to find a good Linux OS I decided to give Linux Mint one more try. One thing I noticed when I fired up Firefox was that the default engine was not Google (the usual with FF) but one I haven't heard called Duck Duck Go. I ended up ignoring it since I use Google Chrome as my web browser.

As I was going through the Mint blog, I came across this post. Explaining the partnership between Linux Mint and Duck Duck Go. In it a few advantages are mentioned of using DDG: they don't track you searches and they do not do something called bubbling (personalizing results based on previous searches, locations, sites visited etc…). They even have a website for each of these features donttrack.us and dontbubble.us. They also source their results from multiple engines and resources (over 50 according to them) in addition to their own crawler.

I decided to set DDG as my default engine in Chrome and give them a try for the rest of the day. The results are most of the time good (note I haven't said very good or excellent). Given it's relatively new compared to Google (only few years vs. more than a decade) there is still some room for improvement. They seem to have figured that might be the case and as a result added some short codes to redirect your query to one of your other preferred engines. For example, if you want to search for "tech blogs" on DDG and would rather have Google's result your search query would look like "!g tech blogs". They have a complete list of !Bang codes here.

Results are loaded as a single page rather than multiple pages like Google. Sponsored links are, in my opinion, much more clearly marked. They also have an interesting feature called a "0-click box", which is basically a box at the top of the results page with what they think is useful information related to your query.

Is Duck Duck Go going to take over Google soon? Unlikely, but they are an adversary that the big G needs to consider (remember even Google was a startup), even though all they offer right now is search.

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Say No to SOPA and PIPA

Elyas Kashfi / January 18, 2012 / Internet, Technology / Permalink

I've been holding back this post about SOPA and PIPA until today. As you have probably noticed several websites have blocked their content. Most notably, Wikipedia (the English version), Reddit and The Cheezburger Network (memebase etc…) just to name a few, to protest against these bills. They are American bills, you shouldn't care if you live outside the US. Wrong! Look at the sites you visit, how many of them are based in the US? Take a look at the search engine you use. Where is it from? See the issue?

SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) if passed, could theoretically take down any site that shares content that may be dubious in nature. There goes your video and image sharing sites. Wikipedia would also probably go since any article mentioning something copyrighted will also go. No problem, if it's copyrighted it's copyrighted… Nope. You can literally pull the content by just "claiming" that the site is sharing your content illegally and they must abide by your request or fight it in court. You can see which path is easy. Oh and it also doesn't matter if the website is based in the US.

PIPA (PROTECT IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act)) is similar to SOPA and is apparently based on another act (COICA) that failed to pass in the past.

Luckily there are big guys against SOPA such as Google, Twitter and Facebook to name a few. Not only will these acts hurt users of such services, these services may die since they monetize on content sharing and socializing (legally or illegally is not the issue). Unfortunately there are some big players for these acts: ~~GoDaddy~~ (thanks to Ali Fareed) , Sony, MasterCard, Visa and of course the whole entertainment bandwagon. A complete list may be found here.

Think about this as you surf the web…

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Arrandma Is Out!

Elyas Kashfi / January 17, 2012 / Bahrain, Review / Permalink

My very close friend's (Mohammed Fawzi Faleh AlAbdulla) fantasy/sci-fi novel, Arrandma, is out! I had the honor and pleasure of reading the draft copy and, even though I am quite new to the genre, it is a good read! It's even better now after being polished to perfection . This is probably a first in the region!

The only spoiler I'm letting out is that it is about a young boy called Loriem on an adventure to find the Lost Stone in an attempt to restore balance to the world of Arrandma.

The printed hardcover and paperback versions are currently available now from Lulu Publishing. It will soon be out on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, with the ePub and Kindle versions publishing soon. Updates are on the official Arrandma site. Enjoy reading!

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Coping With The Unexpected

Elyas Kashfi / January 15, 2012 / Life / Permalink

It's just been 5 days since I've gone into a new phase of things and had planned to do stuff I don't usually do. Just a day after listing what I planned to do, something unexpected happened (I'm a big cat lover). I had a feeling things were too good, too quiet, too fun etc… I have a saying, something is wrong when nothing is wrong. I doubt anyone has a perfect day. Something, no matter how miniscule (or grand) is bound to happen that you will either shrug off or be like a throwing a spanner into the gears running your day.

How do you exactly cope with the unexpected? Fortunately and, ironically, unfortunately you can't stop time and life goes on. Humans are quite different from any other creature in that we can quickly adapt to our environment (the physical and mental environment we live in). Things don't always go as planned, but you have the power to set things right. Once you realize and accept things the way they are you can start making the decisions to set things back in their places. That still didn't answer the starting question of this paragraph. I don't want to spoon feed answers because this topic is too random for certain answers. My advice: whatever decision you make, do it confidently. Before you know it, you'll realize it was the right decision.

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I Have Become the Proud Parent of a…

Elyas Kashfi / January 14, 2012 / Bahrain, Life / Permalink

cat.

After nights of cat fights in the garden, one of our "garden" cats got bitten on the foot several times. The poor thing's foot got swollen and it was limping. I kept it overnight indoors to see if it improved, but it didn't. I decided to take it to the vet and was told it got bitten 4 times, foot was swollen with pus and he had to be sedated for the cleaning procedure.

All went well and it needs to recover for some time indoors. My parents and myself have become even more fond of him (I was the only true cat lover in the household) that he just might end up staying in (still very traumatized, can't even see other cats at the door!). We have been calling him "filhinho" ("little son" in Portuguese).

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PinguyOS: Impressive Enough

Elyas Kashfi / January 12, 2012 / Review, Software, Technology / Permalink

In my quest to find the perfect Linux OS (perfect to me at least), I came across one based on Ubuntu called PinguyOS. I tested it in a virtual machine and it looked pretty good. It uses docks through Docky so that you can access the applications you like the most, by default they come on the bottom and left side of the screen. On your desktop on the right is something called Conky, which by default is set up to monitor your system stats such as CPU, memory usage, network etc… I had a look at the config file and its quite simple to customize once you have an idea what you want.

After making a copy of the previous state of my laptop's hard drive, I went through with a full installation (32-bit version) to see how well hardware is supported. I usually plug in the computer with an Ethernet cable, because most of the time I have had no WiFi support out of the box. PinguyOS detected my WiFi card in its live version flawlessly (expected that since it is based on Ubuntu, the only that worked with WiFi from the get go on my computers). The installation failed the first time for some reason, it just hanged there on the time zone selection screen even though it was downloading stuff. I attempted the installation again and it went smoothly the second time.

I am now in the process of getting stuff installed like Eclipse, Android SDK, Wuala (which I previously reviewed) etc… I just may have found a Linux OS worthy enough to stay on my computer this time. By the way, PinguyOS was ranked 22 on Distrowatch's list last I checked. Goes to show you that you should give lower ranked distros a fair chance !

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Moving Completely to Linux

Elyas Kashfi / January 11, 2012 / Software, Technology / Permalink

Now that I have some free time on my hands, I have decided to move one of my main computers (my laptop specifically) completely to Linux. Unfortunately the dual boot way doesn't work with me, I end up booting into Windows eventually anyway. The reason is that I really haven't found a flavor that is actually "tasty".

At the moment, my netbook has become my Linux test hardware. Sure it doesn't have an amazing graphics card, but I don't use anything graphically intense to warrant testing on something better. Plus, if it works smoothly on a netbook it should be the same or better on a higher end computer. I've lost count at how many times the poor thing has been formatted and injected with a new Linux distro. From the top of my head I can list: Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, CentOS, Scientific, Mint, openSUSE, Mandriva, WattOS. Then there were the BSD distros (ok it's not exactly Linux, but Unix to be specific): FreeBSD (couldn't get GUI running properly) and PC-BSD (GUI based from the start). Unix didn't work out mainly due to the lack of software ported to it, I really missed Google Chrome for example. Even after years of experience with Linux, Unix had a bit of a learning curve.

So as you can see, I can't seem to find that perfect Linux OS that can replace Windows permanently. What am I exactly looking for? Nothing much. I just don't want to spend too much time after installation customizing things to look good. Prefer it to be a distro with a good community, that listens to the community rather than take decisions into their own hands. I prefer if it was based on Debian, but Ubuntu based is fine as well (just an extra hop from Debian). I don't mind the extra work needed to get stuff like WiFi working, it was almost always the case except with Ubuntu.

For now I've got my eyes set on PinguyOS which is based on Ubuntu. I tried it out in a VirtualBox virtual machine and it looked good. I have decided however to install it on my main laptop. The disk cloning process has begun, just in case I revert to Windows. The only software that would have kept me on Windows is Samsung's Odin used to flash firmware on my phone, however I have found a Linux alternative (but haven't tested) called Heimdall.

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