Sabbah Report » Knowledge Management

Microsoft reading your mind!

Haitham Sabbah — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 15:44:42 +0000

"Human beings are often poor reporters of their own actions," Microsoft says.

The company is not happy with evaluating human response while they interact with computers since questioning them at the time is distracting and asking questions later may not produce reliable answers, so, they wants to read the data straight from your brain as you work away. In fact they got a patent for their mind reading application, which is based on using electroencephalograms (EEGs) to record electrical signals within the brain.

Whether humans will accept Microsoft reading their brain waves or not, the company claims that the data will better enable to them to design user interfaces that people find easy to use!!!

It’s all about OIL

Haitham Sabbah — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 18:00:43 +0000

The New York Times has a cool tool which you can search Bushâ€™s SOTU speeches for any word or phrase and visualize how many times it was said since 2001 until 2007.

It is interesting enough tool to make a little search and see where do some 'Iraq related' statements stand, especially that Iâ€™m talking too much about Iraq today. Look what I found:

Great, Iraq 'occupy' more space, 'freedom' and 'peace' are evaporating, and the new entry is: "OIL"!!! God, isn't that what it's all about? I've always been saying it's all about OIL!

Politics explained with two cow analogy

Haitham Sabbah — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 20:38:24 +0000

Maybe you got this by email sometime as I got it, but anyway, while cleaning the spam now I found this interesting piece. Interesting enough to share with others, so here it is:

Politics explained with two cow analogy:

FEUDALISM: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.

PURE SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. You have to take care of all of the cows. The government gives you as much milk as you need.

BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and put them in a barn with everyone else's cows. They are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and eggs as the regulations say you need.

FASCISM: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them and sells you the milk.

PURE COMMUNISM: You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.

RUSSIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.

CAMBODIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. The government takes both of them and shoots you.

DICTATORSHIP: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.

PURE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.

REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.

BUREAUCRACY: You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. Then it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.

PURE ANARCHY: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to take the cows and kill you.

LIBERTARIAN/ANARCHO-CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

SURREALISM: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons. (Original source unknown)

Ok, but this legend is missing something called ZIONISM, so here is my addition:

ZIONISM: You have two cows. Israel steals them and shoots you. Your son comes and returns back one cow; Israel shoots him and steals the cow. Your son's son comes and returns back one cow, Israel shoots your son's son and steals the cow. Your son's son's son comes and takes back one cow; Israel shoots him and steals the cow. Your son's son's son's son comes and returns a cow; Israel shoots your son's son's son's son and steals the cow. And the story goes on...

So, who likes to share more definitions? Say, Neoconism, Bushism, UNism, etc... Come'n share yours ;-)

[Image credit: Carlos Latuff]

Yahoo! New Homepage Design.

Haitham Sabbah — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 14:12:11 +0000

One of the world's most visited webpage, Yahoo.com, has just had a major re-design (can be found at http://yahoo.com/preview).

The Yahoo! re-design is officially flagged as a "preview" (a.k.a. beta) and it isn't yet the default yahoo.com homepage. There is no firm date for the go-live of the new Web 2.0 design.

Here is how the new design looks like:

For a reason or another, I always liked Yahoo! Over the other giant; Google. Especially when it comes to the news section of Yahoo! It was always more informative, friendly and easy to find and organize the info I’m looking after. However, not when it comes to searching in general. On that front, Google always gave me better shot for what I’m looking for/after (other than news).

What caught my eyes in the new design is the significant use of Ajax, which makes it more interactive (for me) to use. Something that I’ve been enjoying a lot in most of the new Web 2.0 websites and will be looking forward to see in news section once they officially launch the new design.

I think the new Yahoo.com preview page is a big improvement on the old design - in terms of both 'look n' feel'. Let’s wait and see how it will roll out.

Google guilty of revealing Israelisï¿½ military secrets

Haitham Sabbah — Mon, 26 Dec 2005 09:52:36 +0000

Google, which offers satellite photos of locations across the globe, has agreed to limit the resolution of footage of sensitive military installations and vulnerable sites in Israel. The locations are: Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, the Dead Sea, Masada, the Dimona Nuclear Research Center (DNRC), Sdot Micha (listed as a nuclear weapons base), the Kinneret, and the Mizpe Ramon crater.

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Google Intelligence Network

Haitham Sabbah — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 21:44:55 +0000

Just got this from official Google blog; they announced Google Base. They say it is an extension of their existing content collection efforts like web crawl, Google Sitemaps, Google Print and Google Video. On the other hand, I also came across Google Analytics, which actually monitors your site visitors and promises you to watch how they interact with your site.

I don't know if it's only me. But day by day I try to avoid using Google. I have a feeling that they are growing bigger than any existing Intelligence network, eben dangerous. Think of it, they know everything about you. With all these tools that you use, voluntary, you are actually telling them all what any intelligence service would wish to know about any one. I think I should boycott Google.

Yahoo Site Explorer

Haitham Sabbah — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 19:05:54 +0000

New service by Yahoo! Site Explorer allows you to explore all the web pages indexed by Yahoo! Search including your blog. View the most popular pages from your blog and other sites, dive into a comprehensive site map, and find pages that link to that site or any page (similar like if you type ï¿½link:www.sitename.comï¿½ in the Google search textbox).

Arab Blogs Map!

Haitham Sabbah — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 16:25:51 +0000

Greetings!

Was playing with Frappr! and thought why not create a map for Arab Blogs and Bloggers?

So here we go. I've just created an account for Arab Blogs and foreigners blogging from the Arab world. All you have to do to join is just select the name of the city you live in, write on your name and add a picture if you like. Don't forget to write the URL of your blog!

Go ahead, let's create a map of Arab bloggers.

Hint: It would be great if one can create a map of blogs per country. Jordan, Tunisia, Saudi, Egypt, etc. Would be glad if you drop me a line to inform me if someone does.

BlogDay2005 is here!

Haitham Sabbah — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 08:21:22 +0000

Today is the DAY! Here is my the result of my quest in random order:

The Carine's Page

Cherryflava pics

Stuck in a Moment

A Handicapped Bitch in Recovery!

Mongolian Matters - Mens in Mongoliï¿½

Bonus:
From Tunisia: The lovely couple, Subzeroblue and Aquacool
From Papua New Guinea: ISLANDBABY
From Pakistan: daMomma Blog
From Palestine: Raising Yousuf: a diary of a mother under occupation
From Israel: Bloghead

Update! BlogDay2005 contributions by some bloggers I tagged (or I didn't, thanks everyone):

01. Abu Sinan
02. Mohamed, from Cairo
03. Ethan
04. Farid Zadi
05. thecutter of peacepalestine
06. Jeff Ooi
07. Neha (more here)
08. Paul Frankenstein (more here)
09. Rachel Barenblat the Velveteen Rabbi
10. Jewaira's Boudoir
11. Karim2k
12. UmQusai
13. umkahlil
14. Abu Aardvark
15. Farid Pouya
16. Paradoxic Pages
17. A Kuwaiti Online
18. Sugar Cubes
19. And Far Away
20. Subzero Blue
21. AquaCool
22. OceanCreep
23. Desert Island Boy
24. Israeli Watch
25. Rebecca
26. David

I'm extremely happy to see the result... Will keep updating the above list whenever another blogger posts her/his list.

01/09/05 - 1130 GMT - On http://technorati.com/tag/BlogDay2005, the tag search gives 305 posts, while searching Google for BlogDay2005 returned 22,800 result... Wow

Why does the terror story keep changing? Ask these guys!

Haitham Sabbah — Mon, 25 Jul 2005 21:18:45 +0000

Matthew Parris writes: I name the four powers who are behind the al-Qaeda conspiracy

AT TIMES of national emergency, the habit of the news media to drop a story or a lead in mid-air when it seems to be going nowhere unsettles the public. The media betray a sort of sheepish wish to ï¿½move onï¿½ from an erroneous report, hoping that their audience will not notice. Rather than acknowledge this, they publish a new report, leaving us to compare it with what had previously been said ï¿½ and draw our own conclusions. Or they start barking up a different tree, the inference being that the last tree may have been the wrong tree.

The habit is more disliked by listeners and readers than I think editors appreciate. Perhaps the first item on each dayï¿½s news agenda should be ï¿½matters arising from yesterdayï¿½s newsï¿½. News editors would then do us the courtesy of explaining where some of those stories went.

Immediately after July 7 it was prominently reported that the explosions ï¿½bore all the hallmarksï¿½ of the use of a type of high-grade military explosive whose presence would indicate a sophisticated international dimension to the bombings. We were alerted to a likely al-Qaeda link.

Then the news went silent. Then it was announced that tests showed the explosive to be of a home-made (or home-makeable) kind that al-Qaeda were known to know about from the internet. Then that story, too, seemed to fizzle out.

I have seen no explanation of how the initial assessment of the type of explosive could have been the reverse of the truth, and no acknowledgement of error from those who made it. Nor has the al-Qaeda/internet angle been followed up. The most recent assessments (Kevin Toolis in The Times yesterday) have suggested that there was nothing special or ï¿½hallmarkedï¿½ about the explosive at all.

Immediately after the first bombing, a report was splashed that two people had been arrested trying to leave Heathrow. The later report that they had been released without charge appeared as little more than a footnote.

A few days after that, much was made of the arrest in Egypt of a British Muslim whom the less-scrupulous news reports called a ï¿½chemistï¿½ (he is a biochemist). There was talk of British agents attending (or joining) his interrogation in Cairo. A statement from the Egyptian authorities denying that they had linked him to the bombing or that he was on their list of al-Qaeda suspects, did receive momentary attention ï¿½ and then the story seemed to die. I do not know what has happened to it, or him.

Then there were some big headlines about an alleged ï¿½al-Qaeda operativeï¿½ who had ï¿½slippedï¿½ into Britain, and slipped out ï¿½ just before the bombings. But it transpired that he was low on our counter-terrorist servicesï¿½ lists of security threats ï¿½ and that story, too, has disappeared.

Then there was an arrest in Pakistan of an alleged ï¿½al-Qaeda mastermindï¿½, about which reports have become increasingly confused, dropping from their early position as leading news items. I do not know where we are now on these reports. If I understood them correctly, what helped to trace this mastermind were records of calls made to him by all, or some, of the four July 7 bombers from their mobile phones.

If anyone has asked (or answered) a question that surely occurred to millions of us, then I have yet to hear of it: why did the bombers not take the elementary precaution of phoning the mastermind from a telephone box? Just how master was this mind? Is it not a curious way of operating a terrorist network, if the terrorists are to call their mastermind on their mobile phones, then take the phones with them on their bombing spree?

This is only a small sample of the deadends (or possible deadends) in the July 7 and July 21 stories. You will have noticed many others. You will notice, too, that every one tends in the same direction. Each report, when first we read it, accentuated the impression that we face a formidable, capable, extensive and well-organised terrorist movement, with important links abroad, and that is almost certainly being masterminded from abroad.

And indeed we may. Nothing ï¿½ I repeat, nothing ï¿½ I write here is meant to exclude that possibility. Some of the scares that grip our headlines and imaginations do later turn out to have been every bit the threat we thought they were. I have not the least idea what may be the size, shape and competence of al-Qaeda and would not dream of suggesting (and do not believe) that they are uninvolved.

Nor do I mean to downplay the horrors that have hit London: death and destruction are death and destruction, whoever causes them.

Nor do I want to imply doubt about the scale of the horrors that may lie ahead. Home-grown or foreign-born, at whatever level of competence, and whether a concerted campaign or demented craze, this kind of thing is deadly and difficult to combat.

My purpose is more limited. To alert you to the enormous, insidious and mostly unconscious pressure that exists to talk up, rather than talk down, the efficacy of al-Qaeda. When all the pressures are to talk up a lethal characterisation of the forces at work, we need to be supercool in the way we look at these reports.

You have read much about the threat of one particular conspiracy. Here is another. There is an unwitting conspiracy between four separate powers to represent the worldwide al-Qaeda network as fiendishly clever, powerfully effective and deeply involved in the London bombings.

First, the news media. Al-Qaeda is a ï¿½narrativeï¿½ and a gripping one. Everybody loves a mystery story. Everybody loves a thriller. Everybody needs a plot. All journalists have an in-built tendency to make links between things and find unifying forces at work. A series of random and unrelated facts makes for a shapeless account. Report without implicit explanation is baffling and finally boring. No British journalist I know would invent or consciously distort a report in order to exaggerate the involvement of al-Qaeda; but most of us are drawn to explanations that, well, explain.

Secondly, the Government. I would not be so rude or stupid as to suggest that ministers take any sort of satisfaction from terrorist atrocities. But leadership is made easier if there is a visible, tangible threat; and easier still if it can be represented as completely alien. Us v Them is the narrative a politician is most at home with. The BBCï¿½s The Power of Nightmares made an important point: fear silences opposition, and governments walk tallest when an external threat can be identified and they can lead us against it. ï¿½Evilï¿½ is a more convenient opponent than stupidity, inadequacy and human dysfunction. We hold our leadersï¿½ hands a little more tightly in the dark.

Thirdly, the security services. The police, British Intelligence, and our counter-terrorism apparatus, are all flattered in their work by headlines that suggest that the enemy is formidable, incredibly sophisticated and hard to catch. Any failure on the part of our security services to detect in advance or prevent a terrorist outrage, or to catch the terrorists afterwards, is easily explained if the terrorist movement is widely agreed to be fiendishly clever and well organised. It is not flattering to a counter-terrorism chief to suggest that his quarry is a muppet. The tale of a police mastermind calls for a criminal mastermind, too.

Finally, of course, the terrorist himself. A reputation for fearsomeness and sophistication is nothing but a boon not only to his self-esteem, but also to his efforts to recruit others to his cause. Never think that speeches about the wickedness and cruelty of al-Qaeda do other than burnish the legend.

From a certain point of view, the journalist, the politician, the police chief and the terrorist can be seen as locked in a macabre waltz of the mind, no less distorting for being unconscious. We should not to join that dance.

Casualties in Iraq

Haitham Sabbah — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 19:52:02 +0000

Here's an interesting animated map of casualties in Iraq day by day over the past couple of years.

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Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries

Haitham Sabbah — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 20:54:53 +0000

In case you missed it, this is the list of the "Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries", you should really take a look. Of course, the list was compiled by "a panel of 15 conservative scholars and public policy leaders."
If anyone hasn't already read any of these (like me) add them to your "to read" shelf. This is the stupidest publicity stunt ever!!

Ask your (USA) media why they are silent on the AIPAC espionage story

Haitham Sabbah — Tue, 31 May 2005 13:37:24 +0000

Received by email (exposeaipac@gmail.com):

We appeal to activists everywhere to hold the media in this country accountable for not reporting what everyone else in the world is reporting. It's a shame that the following story is headline news in all of the Israeli media outlets and that not a single American newspaper finds this news item worthy enough to print. Call the media in your neighborhood both local and national and ask them why they have chosen to sweep this story under the rug. It should be headline news for all Americans that our Congressmen, Senators and Bush cabinet members were at AIPAC's latest convention to show support for the
strong lobby group which focuses exclusively on Israeli concerns. As the meeting was taking place, the government was planning to indict two prominent AIPAC members on charges of espionage. It is of note that AIPAC is paying to defend these two and denies any wrong doing.

Is this not a story worthy of reporting?

Complete media blackout in the U.S. (Sabbah say: the reason is known)

U.S. to indict two senior AIPAC officials under Espionage Act

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/581788.html
By Nathan Guttman, Haaretz Correspondent WASHINGTON - The U.S. Justice Department is expected to file indictments against two former senior staffers at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) - Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman - and, according to sources familiar with the affair, the charges will be subsumed under the Espionage Act.

A Virginia grand jury is now examining the evidence in the case, which involved receipt of classified defense information from Larry Franklin, a Pentagon official, and its transfer to the representative of a foreign country, Naor Gilon, of the Israeli embassy in Washington.

Sources involved in the case confirmed that the Espionage Act is on the agenda. But there is also the possibility that the Justice Department is raising the intention to use that law with the purpose of reaching a plea bargain concerning a lesser offense, albeit one that is still covered by anti-espionage legislation in the U.S.

Presumably, if indeed such an indictment is filed against two former top-level AIPAC staff members, then Gilon's name will come up, even though he is not a suspect. Israeli officials say he was never questioned in the affair. Gilon heads the political department at the embassy.

According to the sources, the grand jury will submit indictments in the coming weeks against Rosen, the former head of foreign policy for the lobbying organization, and against Weissman, who was responsible for the Iranian brief in AIPAC. The grand jury is expected to hand down its indictment against Franklin this week. He is suspected of handing over the classified information. That indictment is expected to be similar to the criminal complaint already filed by the FBI.

The classified material is said to involve information about Iranian intentions to harm American soldiers in Iraq, and it was supposedly given to the two former AIPAC staffers during lunch in Virginia on June 26, 2003.

But suspicions against Rosen and Weissman focus on a meeting a year later, on July 12, 2004. Franklin was cooperating by then with the FBI, which had threatened him with an indictment after tracking his earlier meetings with the AIPAC men, discovering the alleged hand-over of secret information. He agreed to take part in a sting operation in which he would give the two information and the investigators would then follow them.

Franklin called Weissman and asked for a meeting to discuss an important subject. At the meeting, in a mall near the Pentagon, Franklin told Weissman that Iranian agents were trying to capture Israeli civilians working in the Kurdish area in northern Iraq. Around the same time there had been conflicting reports in Washington about an Israeli presence in Kurdish Iraq. Journalist Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker had written that Israelis were operating there, but Israel - and the Americans -denied it.

At the meeting, Franklin told Weissman that the information was classified. This is significant in terms of the investigation, since it prevents the AIPAC men from claiming in their defense that they did not know they were dealing with state secrets.

Weissman left the meeting and went straight to Rosen's AIPAC office at Capitol Hill. He said it was a matter of life or death, and that Israeli lives were in immediate danger. The two made three phone calls: to an administration official, to Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post, and to Gilon, at the embassy. Rosen told Gilon about the information and the Israeli official promised he would look into it. All of those calls were wiretapped by the FBI and are part of the case against Rosen and Weissman.

Plato Cacheris, Franklin's lawyer, confirmed to The New York Sun this weekend that his client indeed took part in the sting operation and said that the investigators appealed to Franklin's sense of patriotism to win him over.

The fact that Rosen and Weissman, as American citizens, handed information to an official representative of a foreign power while nowing it was classified is incriminating under the 1917 Espionage Act, which defines as a crime receipt of classified information for the purpose of helping any foreign entity.

The estimated 500 cases involving prosecution of this crime over the last 90 years have always focused on the accused party initiating receipt of the information and on the damage done to the U.S. as a result. In this case, Franklin initiated the transferal of information - and there is no clear-cut evidence regarding the damage done to the U.S.

Rosen, who was under FBI surveillance for at least four years, is now planning his defense with the help of high-profile attorney Abby Lowell. He does not want a plea bargain and prefers to fight it out in court, so he can prove his innocence and go back to work for the lobby.

A decisive factor regarding the future of the case will be the extent of the cooperation between Franklin and the investigators. If Franklin depicts his relationship with Weissman and Rosen as close, and one in which he was asked to provide information, it will help the prosecution. Rosen and Weissman claim that the connection with him was minimal and mostly involved trading professional assessments. (Franklin met with Rosen three times, and more often with Weissman.)

But Franklin is not believed right now to be cooperating fully and he faces two charges: one for handing over the information in 2003, and the other for the illegal possession of 83 classified documents at his home in West Virginia. The maximum punishment for each of the charges is 10 years in prison. If he cooperates with the investigation, the punishment could be significantly reduced.

AIPAC will presumably be discussed in the actual trials. But right now, at least, it does not appear the organization itself will be charged. AIPAC leaders have taken a series of steps to cut themselves off from the two former officials suspected in the case. Sources close to the case say the prosecution posed four conditions to AIPAC, which would guarantee that it would not be involved in the indictments: a change of working methods to ensure that such incidents don't happen
again; the firing of the two officials and public disassociation from them; no offers of high severance or anything else to make it appear the two quit of their own volition; and no financing of their legal defense.

AIPAC has abided by the first three conditions - and the severance pay offered the two was considered very low, considering the many years they worked for the lobby. But it is said to be helping with their legal fees, indirectly, through its own law firm.

AIPAC's decision to cooperate with the investigators' demands and to fire the two officials was made after it became evident that the FBI had tape-recordings showing that Franklin explicitly said that the material was secret. AIPAC's assessment was that it would be difficult for the organization to continue working on Capitol Hill, and with the administration, while two of its senior officials are facing such charges.

Although the inquiry is not focused on AIPAC, it is possible the organization will be dragged into the affair when the trial begins. If the two fired staffers are put in the dock, they will try to prove that they only did what was routine and conventional work for their organization.

Act now by contacting your local media and asking them why they are not reporting this story:

ABC News - 212-456-4040
AP 212-621-1600
CBS News - 212-975-3691
CNN - 404-827-1511
Fox News - 212-301-3300
MSNBC - 201-583-5222
NBC News - 212-664-4971
NPR - 202-414-2200
NY Times - 212-556-1234
PBS - 703-998-2150
USA Today - 703-276-3400
U.S. News - 202-955-2000
WS Journal - 212-416-2000
Wash. Post - 202-334-6000
Time - 212-522-1212

Contact your media via email, for mass email address that you can cut and paste go here:

http://www.rumormillnews.com/MEDIA_EMAIL_ADDRESSES.htm

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Why the World Is Flat

Haitham Sabbah — Fri, 06 May 2005 18:44:48 +0000

This is Globalization 3.0. In Globalization 1.0, which began around 1492, the world went from size large to size medium. In Globalization 2.0, the era that introduced us to multinational companies, it went from size medium to size small. And then around 2000 came Globalization 3.0, in which the world went from being small to tiny. There's a difference between being able to make long distance phone calls cheaper on the Internet and walking around Riyadh with a PDA where you can have all of Google in your pocket. It's a difference in degree that's so enormous it becomes a difference in kind.

Cell Phones No Luxury to Palestinians

Haitham Sabbah — Thu, 05 May 2005 11:24:01 +0000

Palestinian youths do not buy mobiles just to hear them ring.

ï¿½We send SMS alerts to university students in the Gaza Strip informing them about exam and registration dates and keep them updated on the latest developments in their respective universities. All they need is just o send us their full names, their universities and their mobile numbers."