Another Crazy Saudi Bashing Our Holy Prophet

This guy is even crazier than Hamza Khashgari of a few weeks back. This new guy, Humoud Saleh Al-Amri, went way further than Hamza in his insults, talking about our Prophet Mohammad in a very derogatory and insulting language.

He claims to have converted to Christianity a few years back and had asked the authorities reflect his conversion. That doesn’t give him the right to insult Islam or our prophet, plus it really just basically means he’ll most probably be executed in Saudi.

He’s been in and out of jail a few times over stuff like this before, but I think this is his worst work yet. For his sake, I hope he turns out to be a certified mental nutcase, otherwise he’s in for some tough trouble [Source].

Yesterday’s Terrible Traffic Jam

A friend of mine took this picture yesterday morning on the way to work, around 7 a.m. It took her 50 minutes to get to work, for a a journey that usually takes just 7-8 minutes.

Fast forward a few hours, at 11.30, I myself get stuck right on Damascus’ street bridge. It took me 35 minutes to get from the top of the bridge to the 1st entrance into Faiha (a distance of less than 500 meters). I’ve never seen the 3rd RR this jammed, ever.

Back to this morning, our papers [link] greet us with this picture below. It turns out that the truck-trailer accident of yesterday morning was the cause of all yesterday’s traffic blocks.

Drunk Driver Causes Electricity Shutdowns in A Saudi City

 أسفرت التحقيقات مع سائق الشاحنة التي تسببت في قطع التيار الكهربائي عن احياء بالمجمعة لساعات الخميس الماضي اثر ارتطام الشاحنة بعمود للضغط العالي اسفرت عن انه كان في حالة سكر اضافة الى وجود كمية من الخمور (عرق) مخبأة في شاحنته. سائق الشاحنة (اسيوي) شوهد قبل لحظات من ارتطامه بالعمود يقود الشاحنة بسرعة كبيرة متجاوزا احدى الاشارات وهي (حمراء). السائق لا يزال يرقد بالمستشفى تحت الملاحظة ومن المقرر خروجه مساء اليوم وايداعه التوقيف لاستكمال التحقيق معه

يذكر ان السائق – والذي يعمل في احدى المؤسسات الخاصة في الانشاء – كان يقود شاحنته بتهور كبير ما تسبب في اصطدامه بعامود الكهرباء وانقطاعها عن احياء عدة بالمجمعة مساء الخميس الماضي حتى تم اصلاح الخلل من قبل شركة الكهرباء – المصدر

At Least Take the Price Tag Off 1st

Chili’s Saudi Arabia Closed Down by Authorities

  

 

The authorities in Saudi Arabia have shut down Chili’s restaurant in Ta7liya street in Riyadh Saudi Arabia. They shut down the place for 10 days, after they found more than 3,250 KGs of expired sauces, meats, and cheeses there a couple of days ago [Source].

Saudi Journalist Hamza Kashgari Causes Religious Objections

Hamza Kashgari is a young Saudi journalist, who writes for Al-Billad Newspaper. He posted the above tweets to his Twitter account, on the occasion of the Holy Prophet’s Birthday. This has caused strong protests in Saudi Arabia, and forced the Saudi Minister of Information to ban him from writing in Saudi Arabia.

In addition, a lot of people filed numerous lawsuits against the young writer, for what they say is complete disrespect to our Prophet Mohammad.

يواجه حمزة كشغري الصحفي بصحيفة “البلاد” إجراءات قضائية محتملة فضلاً عن منعه من الكتابة في وسائل إعلامية بتهمة “التطاول” على النبي محمد صلي الله عليه وسلم من خلال رسائل أطلقها على موقع تويتر وقال مخاطبًا النبي “لم أحب هالات القداسة، لن أصلي عليك قبل أن يتراجع معتذرًا في وقت لاحق.

وكتب حمزة كشغري العامل في صحيفة “البلاد” بمناسبة عيد المولد النبوي الذي لا تحتفل به المملكة “في يوم مولدك لن انحني لك، لن أقبل يديك، سأصافحك مصافحة الند للند، وابتسم لك كما تبتسم لي وأتحدث معك كصديق فحسب”.

وقال وزير الثقافة والإعلام عبد العزيز خوجه على موقعه في تويتر “وجهت بمنعه من الكتابة في أي صحيفة أو مجلة سعودية مع اتخاذ الإجراء القانوني حيال ذلك لقد بكيت وغضبت من أن يتطاول أحد على مقام النبوة بكلام لا يليق بمسلم يخاطب سيد الخلق أجمعين” المصدر

Kuwait M.O. Higher Education: Just a Reminder

I read this headline in today’s newspaper [link], and I  don’t know why I thought it would be funny to mention that I’m still waiting for the MOHE’s approval of my own college grades. Even though I’ve already had their official (albeit currently lost) equivalency letter from my college in London, and so was only really looking for a duplicate copy.

I made the proper request (including a personal appearance) back in July of last year (a very good 6-7 months ago), but my certificate’s equivalency is still pending according to the ministry.

What do you think? Does it really take more than half a year to validate anything from a civilized place like London? What do you think the time frame should be for less-civilized places like India & the Philippines?

My personal opinion is that India (the Philippines and the Moon) all have a shorter approval and validation period than my London thing.

Then again, I could be wrong, and that the ministry people could be doing their best (and damn fastest) to finish everyone’s requests. It doesn’t really matter. All I know is that thank God I don’t need my certificate any time soon. Other people might not be so lucky.

Tech Review: I Drove Over My Blackberry Phone

  

I drove over my Blackberry 9900 phone last week. It was, so obviously, very accidental. It was dark, the phone was black, and my friend was wearing something black, and didn’t realize that the phone had fell out of the car. So I drove over it a couple of times, while trying to fit the car into a tight parking space.

  

  

Here are pictures of the, again so obviously, dead phone. The phone lay with its back on the road\gravel, which is what saved the screen and top with me driving back and forth all over it. The screen was ran over by the car’s rubber tyre, which explains its scratch free state. The phone was not dead per say, because you could still feel and hear it faintly vibrating. This gave me hope that it might, in some cosmic act of niceness, be fixed again.

The phone is covered by Wataniya Telecom warranty. But what happened to the phone was clearly an accident, of human abuse proportions; so it was definitely not covered by any warranty. However, their warsha were kind enough to direct me to another mobile-repair shop.

  

  

Here are pictures of the God sent shop. It’s called Smart System, and it’s located on Khalid Bin Al-Waleed St.  (beside the tiny make-shift 30-car parking lot). They were able to fix the phone in under 30 minutes, give me a 60-day warrantee, and only charge me KD30. How amazing is that? They were gona change the scratched battery cover for an extra KD5, but I felt I better keep it as a painful reminder to take better care of the phone.

  

Here are pictures of the phone “apres” fixing. It looks so new, like nothing had ever happened to it (if you ignore the scratched battery cover).

I highly recommend this shop for all your tough and left-for-dead mobile fixing needs. They know what they’re doing and how to fix stuff that look like they’re beyond repair. I’ve had the fixed phone for almost a week now, and its working perfectly and without a glitch.

Thank you Smart System. Thank you very much.

Twitter Censorship

You’ve all probably heard this by now: Twitter will start censoring specific user content, country and tweet wise. Twitter has released these two censorship samples on how a tweet will look like when it’s blocked.

You can read more about it [here] at twitter’s official page.

Learn All About SOPA: Why Wiki and WordPress Closed for the Day

     

 

WordPress.org put together this excellent video explaining how the new SOPA & PIPA anti-piracy laws work and why they’re dangerous to all internet users:

  • Entire websites like youtube, google, wikipedia, and facebook can be shut down completely; just because one of their users violates the new laws. And this can be done without any prior notice of violation.
  • A person can go to jail for five years just by singing a song and posting it on youtube.

Mashable [link] did an excellent job summarizing the threats of the proposed bills:

This means, for example, if you upload a video to YouTube of you singing a popular song, and that song might sell for $1, and your video gets 2,500 views, you are guilty of felony copyright infringement. Furthermore, you can tack on “willful infringement for commercial gain or valued at more than $1,000.”

This would make you a felon, and if a copyright holder were to bring a suit against you, would give you a criminal record that would make it virtually impossible to gain future employment, and may subject you to up to three years in prison for singing a song. You don’t have to receive any money. You don’t have to gain anything from your video. Simply receiving 2,500 views on a song you sung, which happens to have copyright held by someone else, makes you a felon.

I suggest you read Mashable’s article, especially the section that deals with Non-US websites, and how owners could lose ownerships of their sites and domains, even without notification or ability to legally defend themselves in courts.

The poposed bills won’t affect us in Kuwait directly, mostly because we don’t really own or operate any websites. The main effect will be on our use of servers based in other counties and payment companies (like paypal and VISA). In the end, there’s no doubt that these new laws will have a tremendous negative impact on all our online experiences: websites will have more user censorship, and there will be less websites on the net.

Note: SOPA is the Stop Online Piracy Act presented to congress, while PIPA is the Protect IP Act presented to the Senate.