9-year-old plots his fifth Microsoft certification

Born with a passion for computing, 9-year-old Marko Calasan hasn't wasted any time becoming a high-tech pro with four Microsoft IT certifications.

http://www.networkworld.com/slideshows/2010/020510-marko.html#article

كل إللي أقدر أقوله .... إحنا ضيعنا كتير قوي من الوقت ... يعني الشاب ده كمان 10 سنين هايبقي معاه 15 شهادة و بيدرب بقاله 3 أو 4 سنين و ألفله كتابين ثلاثة في ويندوز 9 (علي وقته) ... ما علينا.

CCIEs Worldwide (and the state of Egypt in high-tech industry)

I browsed the CCIEs worldwide list and found some interesting numbers, it sheds some light on the distribution of the top networking talent in the field geographically.

First the totals (last updated 2/5/2010):

Total of Worldwide CCIEs	20864
Total of Routing and Switching CCIEs	17774
Total of Security CCIEs	2393
Total of Service Provider CCIEs	1752
Total of Storage Networking CCIEs	150
Total of Voice CCIEs	1180
Total of Wireless CCIEs	20

Then the country-by country numbers:

USA	5494
P.R. China	3619
Japan	1142
United Kingdom	1052
Korea	1033

Naturally, USA is the largest country to have certified CCIEs (being that it is the home country of Cisco and the largest market for its products), but the interesting number is that Asia holds the largest number of CCIEs collectively (given the population numbers), the really surprising omission in this list is India (which comes in the seventh place), it gives it a more realistic perspective of top tech-related talent distribution in developed countries (with China holding about 5 times the CCIEs compared to India).

Then the Arab World

Saudi Arabia	193
United Arab Emirates	169
Egypt	110
Israel	65
Kuwait	47
Qatar	34
Jordan	33
Lebanon	28
Bahrain	13
Oman	10
Algeria	6
Morocco	6
Tunisia	4
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya	2
Palestinian Territory	2
Yemen	2

Here we find that Saudi Arabia holds the largest number of CCIEs, followed by UAE then Egypt, this shows that Egypt (unlike public press from the Government) is not the largest pool of high-tech talent in the Middle East (and its not Israel either, shown here for comparison purposes), but Saudi Arabia and UAE, this might not be true in all of the high-tech segments, but it indicates that the efforts excreted by the Governmental initiatives in Egypt are not that effective in creating a pool of high-end expertise in the field.
Egypt is not even the largest country in Africa to hold CCIEs, South Africa (with 122 CCIEs) is higher in this list.

The iPad

The long-rumored Apple tablet has been released.
A 9.7 inches LED Multi-touch screen (1024x768 pixel with 132 ppi) with 1.5 pounds and 0.5 inch thin body, and 10 hours battery life.
It has a custom 1 GHz processor designed by Apple, Wi-Fi 802.11n connectivity, optional 3G modem, built-in speaker; and 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB of flash storage.
The iPad uses the same OS as the iPhone but with higher resolution, it means that iPhone Apps are supported.
Many great accessories specifically designed for iPad will be available.

Oracle Sun Acquisition complete

Earlier today, Oracle held an event to outline the road-map of acquisition of Sun Microsystems and the transformation from a software-only company (the third largest already) into a complete systems provider (integrated hardware and software solutions provider) that control each and every part of its ecosystem.

The event talked about many technologies that is affected by the acquisition, like:

Java

• JavaFX is the highlight of presentation layer technologies.
• Will continue to address Desktop (SE), Enterprise (EE) and Mobile (ME) platforms, and will try to converge the APIs between SE and ME and use JavaFX as the common presentation technology.

Application Server/Java EE

• GlassFish will join WebLogic as the Application Server platform for Oracle (positioning it for the Developers and the Open Source community while position WebLogic for the enterprise and mission-critical installations)
• GlassFish will continue to be the reference implementation, based on Open Source model, with commercial support for it, parts of it will be ported to WebLogic, most probably it will form the foundation for newer WebLogic releases and powers its Java EE-certified core.
• Web Center will be the strategic Portal solution (against Sun GlassFish Web Space)
• The JRockit JVM will be positioned on the same support level as the reference HotSpot JVM, most probably is that more interactions between the core-JVM and the JRockit in the upcoming years.

Developer Tools

• Oracle JDeveloper will continue to become the premier IDE for Oracle and Java Enterprise Applications (for Database and Java EE based Applications, SOA, and ADF-based applications)
• Oracle Pack for Eclipse will continue to be developed to provides integration between Eclipse and Oracle, but no major new offerings (which was expected)
• NetBeans will continue to be an Open Source offering, and stay as very wide covering as it is now (for covering the complete Java portfolio) and support for NetBeans Platform will continue.
• Support for Hudson, Oracle Team Productivity Center, maven, Subversion, BugZilla, and many other ALM tools to be shared among JDeveloper and NetBeans
• The Matisse Visual Forms Editor from NetBeans will be integrated in JDeveloper
• SOA & Application Server Adapters will be shared from JDeveloper to NetBeans

Operating Systems

• Continue support and development in Solaris and Unbreakable Linux
• Higher integration between the Oracle Database and Solaris ZFS

Virtualization

• Virtual Box will be continued to be developed and integrated with Oracle VM (to use the same Oracle Virtual Machine template format)
• Solaris Logical Domains (LDom) will become Oracle VM for SPARC and managed through Oracle VM management consoles
• Oracle VM for x86 will add support for Solaris
• Continued support for Solaris Containers and Dynamic Domains (on M Series Servers)
• Next version of Oracle VM will include Virtual Iron technology with better APIs and management console
• Sun VDI Broker will be continued to be development (including Secure Global Desktop)
• Oracle VM Storage Connect and ASM will continue to be used for Storage Virtualization
• Open Storage systems will be used for Storage at the hardware and low-level functions

Management

• Oracle Enterprise Manager (For managing Database, Middleware, and Applications) and Sun Ops Center (for managing Hardware, OS and Virtualization) will be support for the short-term
• Higher connectivity between Enterprise Manager and Ops Center will be developed in the mid-term to allow shared alerts and events, and allow some data to cross applications (12-18 months)
• In the long-term, the Enterprise Manager will consume the functionality of Ops Center and become the unified management console of all the Oracle products 

More topics tofollow in later posts...

كل سنة و إنت طيب يا عمنا

أوصيك يابني بالقمر و الزهـــــــــــــور

أوصيك بليل القاهرة المسحـــــــــــــور

و إن جيت في بالك .. إشتري عقد فل

لأي سمرا.. وقبري إوعك تـــــــــزور

عجبي !!!!

خالد الهبر- اصنام العرب

صرلن شي ميّة سنة ما ربحوا العرب

ميّة سنة ملقوحين بقصور الدهب

ميّة سنة مرتاحين, ولا القدس ولا فلسطين

عملوا عندن شي صحوة أو صرخة غضب!!

صرلن شي ميّة سنة بيطيعوا العرب

شو ما عملولن بيقولوا هيدا اللي انكتب

النكبة مش قصّة كبيرة, والنكسة نكسة زغيري

خسروا الأرض و خسروا العرض و ما انهزّوا العرب!!

صرلن شي ميّة سنة عجقة براميل

بترول متلّي الصحرة... قرّب عبّي و شيل

و عقالات و أراكيل, وكفّيات و مواويل

و هزّة خصر و غنّيات... لعيون العرب

ميّة سنة مأخودين بأخبار العنتر

حكايات مهلهل والزير والكدبة بتكبر

وفايق يا عبس لمّا, فتحنا الأندلس يامّا؟

رجعنا منها منصورين ... الله واكبر

صرلن شي ميّة سنة ما بكيوا عالأطلال

ولا دمعة كانت تنزل, صارت تبكي الأطلال

ووينك يا خيّال؟ أنزل يا خيّال

اسحب سيفك بركي بتوعا أصنام العرب

شكراً لإسلام مهدي (عمدة كفر المخططين المثقفين) علي اللينك.

صحوة وطنية.. أم نوبة هستيرية؟ - بقلم جلال أمين

 نحن لا نعيش فى عصر انتصار الرأسمالية (ولا الاشتراكية بالطبع) ولا انتصار الديمقراطية أو حقوق الإنسان. كما أننا لا نعيش نهاية التاريخ، كما زعم أحد الكتاب منذ عشرين عاما، ولا عصر صراع الحضارات، كما قال آخر بعده بقليل. نحن نعيش عصر الجماهير الغفيرة: عصر التليفزيون والأقمار الصناعية والقنوات الفضائية، والتليفون المحمول الذى يحتوى أيضا آلة فوتوغرافية وبريدا إلكترونيا وشبكة الإنترنت.

أستكمل قراءة المقال

بجد مقالة من أفضل ما قرأت في تحليل الموقف في مصر النهاردة ... مش بس ماتش مصر و الجزائر .. الموقف المصري كله من كل المواقف ... صحيح إللي عايز يعمل إنقلاب مش محتاج أكتر من مبني اإذاعة و التليفزيون.

يعني هيا دي الوطنية ؟ ... ماتش كورة و نظيط في الهيصة ؟ ... طب كل واحد علي شغله لإن المشكلة ماهياش حكومة يا أمة ضحكت منجهلها الأمم.

الموضوع أنا حاسس بقا بزيادة ....يعني ماتش كورة و تصفيات كأس عالم ... ماشي .... إنما تتفرج بقا علي المسخرة ... حالة عامة من الإحباط بعد خسارة الماتش .... يعني ما كانش فيه حاجة تحبط قبل الماتش !!! داحنا كان فاضل نبدأ تنظيم حفلات إنتحار جماعي ... يبقي ليه بقا التعلق بقشه نظيط فيها و نحاول نفرح بأي طريقة ولا شكل .... و لا هوا علشان دي الفرحة السهلة ... ناس هاتلعب و فرقة تكسب و إحنا لينا الزيطة ... طب و لما إحنا بلد بتعز الفرحة زي عنيها كده ... مانعمل لروحنا فرحة بجد .... نخلي فيه بلد ينفع نفرح فيها ... ولا هوا لازم يعملولنا علشان إحنا نفرح.

و راخر التانيين ... شعب الجزائر الشقيق .... ده إيه الهبل ده يا ربي .... هوا أنا مكتوب عليا أفضل حاسس إن مافيش دم عند 250 مليون واحد ؟ .... ضرب و غباوة و هبل و سخافة و صفاقة  .... حاجة بجد مالهاش لازمة ... طب يعني أنتوا راخرين بلدكوا خلاص تمام التمام و الدنيا زبادي خلاط و فاضل ماتش كورة علشان تبقوا علي قمة العالم .... بلا وكسة.

Depreciation plans for ArcGIS 9.3.1 and 9.4 (2)

In the last post I published a list depreciated features in ArcGIS 9.3.1 and 9.4, a shorter list is here:

• ArcGIS Desktop will not support Windows 2000, Visual Basic 6, Visio, Visual Studio 2005 in 9.4 and later will not support Visual Basic for Applications in 9.5
• ArcGIS Engine and ArcReader will not support Sun Solaris in 9.5 (keeping only Windows and Linux)
• ArcInfo Workstation will not support IBM AIX in 9.4 and later will not support Sun Solaris in 9.5, which will be the last release of the product
• ArcSDE will not support Informix 32-bit, SQL Server 2000, PostgreSQL on Red Hat 4, HP-UX on PA-RISC (keeping HP-UX on Itanium), Oracle 9i, Server-side geocoding in 9.4 and later will be the only component in ArcGIS to support Sun Solaris in 9.5
• ArcIMS will not support ArcMap Server, ArcIMS Route Server, IBM AIX, HP-UX in 9.4 and will later not support ArcIMS Metadata Server and Sun Solaris (keeping only Microsoft Windows and Linux) in 9.5, which will be the last release of the product
• ArcGIS Server will not support Enterprise Application Developer Framework (EADF) for Java in 9.4

Depreciation plans for ArcGIS 9.3.1 and 9.4

From the James Fee GIS Blog, a great source to GIS & ESRI info and news, any serious GIS user should check it out.

ESRI released a roadmap of its technologies and platforms to abandon in the next releases of ESRI ArcGIS platform, it includes:

The ArcGIS 9.3.1 Platform (all of the ArcGIS products) is the last version to support:

• Microsoft Windows 2000
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 (it is very simple to move from VS2005 to VS2008 and to VS2010)
• Internet Explorer 6 (while it is still used ... it should be phased out of support lifecycles)

ArcGIS Desktop 9.3.1 is the last version to support:

• Crystal Report Wizard, a new reporting engine is used that should be more robust and have better features and performance.
• The Survey Editor Component and Survey Dataset within the Survey Analyst (I don't know what's left from the Survey Analyst)
• CASE tools and the Import Schema Wizard (that means goodbye for Microsoft Visio)
• Microsoft Visual Basic 6 (time to leave such ancient platform)
• Sun Solaris 9 for ArcReader and ArcGIS Engine (This keeps only Solaris 10/Linux/Microsoft Windows Platform)

ArcInfo Workstation 9.3.1 is the last version to support:

• IBM AIX (the only remaining platforms are Microsoft Windows and Sun Solaris)

ArcIMS 9.3.1 is the last version to support:

• ArcMap Server Extension to ArcIMS
• ArcIMS Route server extension
• IBM AIX
• HP-UX (the only remaining platforms are Microsoft Windows, Linux and Sun Solaris)

ArcSDE 9.3.1 (part of ArcGIS Server) is the last version to support:

• 32-bit Informix on the AIX and Solaris platforms
• Microsoft SQL Server 2000
• HP-UX on the PA-RISC processor (support for ArcSDE technology on HP-UX on the Itanium processor is continued)
• PostgreSQL on Red Hat 4 (support for newer version of Red Hat Linux is continued)
• Oracle 9i
• Server-side geocoding in ArcSDE (ArcGIS Server geocode services have replaced the server-side geocoding functionality in ArcSDE)

ArcGIS Server 9.3.1 is the last version to support:

• Enterprise Application Developer Framework (EADF) for ArcGIS Server Enterprise Java release (EADF provided out-of-the box Enterprise Java Beans (EJBs) that were ready to use and deploy across supported J2EE 1.4 application servers. Users can still take advantage of EJBs by following patterns highlighting the ArcGIS Java Web Services Toolkit (AgsJWS) and EJB3)
• Sun Solaris 9 (with the exception of the ArcSDE technology component)

ArcGIS Mobile 9.3.1 is the last version to support:

• Windows CE .NET platform (including Windows CE .NET 4.2 and 5.0)

The ArcGIS 9.4 Platform (all of the ArcGIS products) is the last version to support:

• Sun Solaris (with the exception of the ArcSDE technology component)

ArcGIS Desktop 9.4 will be the last version to support:

• Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) (as Microsoft no longer promotes or updates VBA)

ArcInfo Workstation 9.4:

• ArcInfo Workstation will be decoupled from ArcGIS Desktop 9.4
• Windows 7 as the last expected Windows platform upgrade
• Support for connecting to ArcSDE

ArcIMS 9.4 is the last version to support:

• ArcIMS Metadata Server (replacing it with search technology in the ArcGIS Geoportal Extension 9.3.1, and in ArcGIS Server 9.4)

For the next major release after ArcGIS 9.4 (maybe 9.5 or 10.0):

• The last planned release for ArcInfo Workstation on Windows (which will be the last supported platforms)
• The last planned release for ArcIMS on Windows and Linux (which will be the last supported platforms)