Though the sting and specter of looming layoffs is still fresh for everyone, and news about the pandemic seems gloomy, I think we can all use a bit of a note of positivity.
Category: Society
Topics related to people, communities, & organizations
The Video Wars of 2027 – Mozilla Hacks – the Web developer blog
Patent and copyright law collude to create a dystopian world – fiction or future?
Empathy and leadership
A comment I made on LinkedIn may be the kernel of something I would like to expand on more.
Donate to Wikipedia
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم الحد لله, Allāh has granted me tawfīq to donate to Wikipedia. I wouldn’t mention this except for the fact that I hope others, upon reading this, might give it consideration when they otherwise would not have. A donation to Wikipedia is tax-deductible, so you can save on your taxes or get…
Moodle 2.0 released!
Alḥamdulillāh, Moodle 2.0 has been released! This is important for a lot of reasons, amongst them being that I work with Moodle on a day-to-day basis in my daytime job, and I use it on some of my own sites. However, most important is the fact that Moodle provides a platform for education that is…
The Absurdity
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم A few days ago, Matt Lee of the Free Software Foundation had asked in the #theora IRC channel for help in making a DVD of the Patent Absurdity documentary. Several people volunteered to help, and I was one of them. I discovered later that this was related to the “Who should…
60 Minutes segment on apartheid in Israel
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/23/60minutes/main4749723.shtml#ccmm Watch at the link above for a bold & frank look at the living conditions of the Palestinians under apartheid in Israel, specifically in the West Bank. Interesting to note is that the story only mentioned the West Bank. Keep in mind when viewing their situation that Gaza is far, far worse off due…
International Year of Astronomy 2009
Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day featured an announcement for the International Year of Astronomy. This alone would be noteworthy enough, but they also have a downloadable trailer (warning: contains some music, but it’s not prominent until the end). This is great for geeks, and especially video geeks like Belal & me…
Arundhati Roy: Mumbai was not India’s 9/11
Arundhati Roy, in an article for the Guardian out of the United Kingdom, has written a deep, insightful, and thought-provoking article analyzing the circumstances and the context surrounding the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai. For a non-Indian like me, most of what she writes is very fresh & new, revealing currents in the Subcontinental social…
Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?
Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Alhamdulillaah, though I am woefully behind in catching-up on my Planet Fedora feed, I do sometimes uncover gems in these old posts. One such post includes a link to a TED talk by Ken Robinson, “Do schools kill creativity?“. I found the video to be both enlightening as well as entertaining, as he…
Freedom is for the people
Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem michael.dehaan (his spelling, not mine!) posted something that you can take or leave (I don’t want to start a flame war on my own blog): michaeldehaan.net | Popularity Contests Are So Junior High School. But what is intriguing are the ideas that develop in the comments. Please take some time and read…
Message Mastery by Belal Khan
Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Alhamdulillaah, my good friend Belal Khan of Leechon Films fame has started (a while back, actually) a program called Message Mastery. You should get the full explanation from the website, but the basic gist of it is that it is a training seminar focused on developing masterful messages through the medium of…
Texas Dawah Convention 2007 Audio Project – overview
Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Introduction Alhamdulillaah, a few months back, I successfully wrapped-up the audio recording & production project for the Texas Dawah Convention 2007. This was clearly one of the most ambitious projects in which I’ve been involved in my life, especially given the degree of responsibility I was given and the amount of work…
Discontinuing with DiscoverULife for now
Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Well, my wife & I have decided, both mutually and with the guidance of istikhaarah, that we’re going to discontinue our participation with DiscoverULife for the time being. We both stayed in for exactly one month, which was always intended to be an evaluation period. As it turns out, given our current…
Getting serious with DiscoverU
Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem When Muhammad Alshareef started his DiscoverU program, I honestly was not very interested. In fact, in one of his early marketing e-mails, I informed him of my dislike for the manner he was approaching, because it was so much like other self-help or marketing programs. It was, more-or-less, off my radar for…
Yahoogle! or Goohoo! – that is the question
I’ve really been thinking about it a lot lately, and now I’m close to the point of certainty that the near future of the Internet will include the merger of the two dot-com giants, Yahoo! & Google. All that’s left, in my eyes, other than some business paperwork and antitrust litigation, is choosing the name…
A day of quotes
In my usual banter with one of my coworkers today, I said the following line, which seemed to make a lot more sense at the time than it did in hindsight: Life is a lot easier when you consider it a figment of your imagination… Later on in the day, in a discussion regarding the…
Obvious obliviousness
While chatting with a good friend on MSN about a particular forums post, I uttered the following phrase which I found to be very enlightened (and such modesty!): I was really surprised that their obliviousness would be so obvious… For background on this quote, the viewer is encouraged to read the entire thread. The quote…
Duck and Cover redux
With much appreciation to Andrei (I make it sound like we’re on a first name basis) and his linkblog, I would very much like to share with you the reason I was laughing hysterically at work today. Reminds me of the hype about duck-and-cover in case of a nuclear holocaust. I say, if you see…
Anti-userism (part 1?)
I’m sure many others have already editorized about the issue, Anti-userism is a constant & growing problem facing consumers & users the world over. What I mean by anti-userism is the trait that software, hardware, & service companies have of putting the user or consumer last when it comes to priorities, in particular, in relation…