My new blog ... مدونتي الجديده

بعد ما يقارب العام ونصف العام على افتتاح هذة المدونة، تشاء الأقدار أن تشد الرحال و تنتقل خواطري و مدوناتي إلى مسكن جديد. فليلة البارحة أتممت بناء مدونتي الجديده بشكلها و مضمونها الجديد. عنوان المدونة الجديده هو:

www.abosalom.com

يصعب على المرء الفراق، ولكن هذة حال الدنيا، وداعاً مدونتي العزيزة

After a year and half of blogging and recodring my life, I decided to move to the next step and launch my own blog. Last night, I have finished developing my new blog and it has been launched under the following URL:

www.abosalom.com

My blog, no doubt we'll meet again, so this is goodbye for now...

Dust Storm in Riyadh

God Forbid

Nagios ... The way to monitor your stuff

The first time my friend Abdullah mentioned Nagios to me, I was kind of not that much interested to hear about it (Sorry Abdullah ;) ). But when I read about it and installed it on my linux machine, I was surprised. Nagios is system, application and network monitoring tool. You can use it to monitor different kind of systems whether it is Windows or Linux/UNIX machine; Server, PC or printer; Switch, router or firewall; Application or service. Additionally, when some thing goes wrong, Nagios will send an immediate notification via email or cellphone. All these features with too many others in a free pen source product called Nagios.

What to monitor ?

You might ask your self "What can I monitor usig Nagios?". The answer is "Every thing!" from simple ping checker to extensive system monitoring using SNMP or any other network protocols. Simply, you set thresholds values for the service or system you are moniroting, and if it exceed these values, it will trigger an event handler. The customer is responsible for developing this handler. You can send notifications, execute a script to do any proactive action, or do what ever you want.

How to install and configure Nagios?

You need first to download Nagios package. If you are running ubuntu machine, you can simply download and install Nagios using Synaptic tool. After downloading and instlling Nagios, you need to configure it using Nagios Documentaions page. The main concept in Nagios configuration is as follow:

1. Define your host in a .cfg file
2. Define the service you want to monitor on the host in another .cfg
   
3. Define the exact command to monitor the service (if it does not exist in command.cfg)
   

Atheeb inaugurated "GO جو"

In a festivity ceremony, Etihad Atheeb Telecoms has inaugurated its commercial brand - GO - last night. It was an amazing ceremony in presence his royal highness prince Abdulaziz Bin Ahmad Bin Abdulaziz, Etihad Atheeb executives and employees, and a number of businessmen.
The cermony started with recitation from the holy qora'an. Then speaches from Prince Abdulaziz & Etihad Atheeb CEO, Dr. Ahmad Sindi followed by documentary movie about Etihad Atheed. The cermony concluded with the inauguration of the commercial brand (GO - جو). Atheeb CEO said that the two balls in the brand mean two Hemispheres; the red big one means a mature and experienced ball, and the green small one means a young ball that want to speedup and catch the big one. GO in English means "go do", "go develop", and "go achieve". "جو" in Arabic means "air", "weather", and "atmosphere" which is the way Atheeb will deliver services to its customers.

Some pics from the cermony

Welcome back Edu

"The best day of my life"

The fist statement told by Eduardo Da Silva - Arsenal striker - after his dreadful injury last year (I wrote a full post about this incedent: Eduardo Da Silva & the horrible injury). The Croatian striker returned last night and scored twice against Cardiff City and puts Arsenal into FA Cup fifth round. We (as Arsenal fans) cannot say more than:

"Welcome back Edu" 

Full  Report from Telegraph

Obama mentioned an Islamic hadith at National Prayer Breakfast

In the politic world, we used to get surprised by the countries presidents. President Barak Obama had a speech last week at the yearly National Prayer Breakfast in Washington D.C., and he was speaking about the faith and "how it should be Unite, not divided".

The most interesting thing that he mentioned the Islam and Muslims more than one time. Moreover, he mentioned hadith said by our messenger Mohammad peace be upon him:

In Islam, there is a hadith that reads “None of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.”

I think, this means that this president knows a lot of thing about our religion more than all previous America's president.

# Reference: http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2009/02/obama_faith_sho.html

حينما يفعل الأتراك ... ما لم يفعله العرب

لا يمر حدث سياسي على الأمة الإسلامية أوالعربية، إلا ويكون لنا من مواقف الخزي والعار الشيء الكثير. لم نعد نطالب بصد عدوان عاشم ظالم، بل لم نعد نطالب بمواقف الشجب و الإستنكار. فهذة المواقف أصبحت حلم يحلم بها المواطن العربي المسلم. الآن نحن نطالب بنطق كلمة الحق، و الإعتراف بالظلم و التعدي. فالطفل اليتيم، و الأرملة المكلومة، والأم التي فقدت أعز ما تملك لا يطالبون سوى بالإعتراف بحقهم الذي تعدت عليه القوة الغاشمة الهمجية التي تضرب دون رحمة، و تقصف دون ذرة إنسانية. كل ما استطعنا فعلة هوتعديد أسباب هذة الحرب، و إشارة أصابع الإتهام لبعضنا البعض. تحليل المواقف السياسية، و التصريح لنشرات الأخبار والبرامج الحوارية هو أكثر ما تميز به السياسي العربي.

و في المقابل، وجدنا دولاً و حضارات أخرى أنصفت إخواننا المسلمين، وذكرت كلمة الحق أمام العالم أجمع. كلنا شاهد موقف رئيس الوزراء التركي رجب طيب أوردوغان حينما إنسحب من مؤتمر دافوس بسويسرا بعد مشادة كلامية مع شمعون بيريس. أوردوغان بهذا الموقف لم يعد الحق لأصحابه، ولن يمنع دولة الصهاينة من معاودة الإعتداء على غزة. و لكن وجدنا رجلاً إستطاع تسجيل موقفاً لم يستطع أي حاكم عربي أن يسجله، و كل مااستطعنا فعلة هو التحية والتبجيل لهذا البطل !!

Distributed Denial Of Service

As usual, I was listening to security now podcast episode #8, and Steve Gibson was talking about the DOS and how it works, and what is the different between DOS and Distributed DOS. I found it very interesting topic and I heard a lot of information I never heard about it.
DOS stands for Denial Of Service, and it is simply a packet traffic that might cause problems for the other end. When a client want to establish a TCP session, the first packet sent from the source (web browser for instance) to the destination (server for instance) is called SYN packet. When the server receive the SYN packet, it allocate number of resources (memory, processor etc) and send back a SYN/ACK packet. If the sender is keep sending this packet (SYN packet), the server will keep allocating resources to the clients till it run out of resources. So DOS does not consume the connection bandwidth ! it attack and consume the server resources.

Conversely, Distributed DOS does consume and attack the conection bandwidth. It simply works by infecting a large number of computers (hundreds to thousands), and tell these computers to attack a single end-user. These computers act as slaves and start sending traffic to this end-user (SYN packet or any other packets). One of the most popular DDOS example is ping packet attack (ICMP packet).

So as a conclusion, DDOS consumes the victim's connection bandwidth, while DOS attacks the victim's resources.

ISP Technology is My New Challenge

Recently, my upper management decided to put me in the ISP department as a line manager. I'm happy with this development because I spent almost a year and half in Atheeb Telecoms keep moving from position to another without having a clear role or responsibility.

When I joint Atheeb I worked for data center project and PMO corporate for almost eight months. Then, I have been moved to work for network integration with IT project. I was following up and tracking the integration issues in addition to my envolvement in the data center project. After I got the PMP certificate last October I joint the network PMO team. My role was to manage the network program as well as developing the project management methodologies in the network department. It was very exciting opportunity for me to practice my knowledge in project & program management.

Eventually, I end up in the ISP department. I said eventually because this is my position as per the final structure. This is a good news for me and at the same time it triggers a new challenge for me in the coming days. ISP technology is a moden technology and it is an interesting feild to be specialized in. I'm intending to focus and consuntrate my reading on this technology. I'll first build my study plan so that I can schedule my time, and to cover all its topics.

Hope insha'allah my plan works, and I got succeed in my new challenge.

The curse of Bahrain

Every time I go to Bahrain, I got an embarrassing position or a difficulty. I have visited Bahrain three times and each time I face a problem. I start thinking may be there is some kind of curse or bad luck in my visits to Bahrain.

My first visit to Bahrain was in Sep 2006 with my friend Abdulmalik. When we reach Dammam we started looking for a car rental shop. We cannot go with our car because my freind's car was registered under his father's name. Our condition was to rent a car and return it to the shop Friday morning, but unfortunately no shop open at that time. We keep looking for very long time and at the end we found one shop that has a branch opens 24|7. We got a car from it after we loose around 3 hours. In my second visit in the summer of 2007, I had a traffic violation and I have to pay it before I can get the traffic permit to cross king Fahad causeway. The problem was not because of the violation, but because I don't have any account in Al-Rajhi nor Al-Riyad bank to pay the violation amount. In addition, the time was 4:00 pm and the banks close at 4:30 !! I tried as fast as I can to find a bank banch and I did it. The employees in the brach were very cooperative and they helped me to pay it.

The reason I'm writing this article is because I faced a very strange position in my third visit last weekend. I tried to prove the curse is not true, but unfortunately this was not the case !!

I rented a car for the same reason in my first visit (my car was registered under my father's name). I prepared every single required document. I made sure that I have no traffic violations, my driver license still valid, and I have the authorization letter from the car rental shop. When I reached the administration of traffic in the causeway, I gave them all my papers. The guy checked every document, and he made sure I have no violation, license still not expired, and the authorization letter is available. I was starring at him and I am pretty sure that there will be a problem somewhere. He looked at me and said "The company has two traffic violations !", I said "Whaaat ? but I have nothing to do with the company !", he said "You cannot take the car outside the kingdom unless the company cleared its record", I told him "My friend, is there any problem in my documents !?", he replied "Call the company, and tell them to pay the amount, otherwise I cannot help you". I called the company and we sort it out immediately.

After my third visit, I proved that the curse is not a myth or something that does not exist at all. No it is exist, but it is something related to psychology sciences any I'm sure everybody has one (or more) :)

New Year ... New War

Two days before we said farewell to 2008 with all its happiness and sadness events. In the same time we received 2009 with our hopes and wishes. With this new coming year no one (even the pessimistic people) expect this beginning of 2009.

Israel started this year (or even a few days before) with a new war on Palestine. Israel government claims that the purpose of this war is to stop Hamas's attacks and missiles, while in the field you see some thing totally different ! You can clearly notice that most of the victims are from children, women and old people !! Are they terrorists ? Are all of them criminals ?? Are they the one who throw the missiles ?

I don't think there is any body who has a bit of humanity and he is happy with what is happening in Gaza. No religion or law or even tradition in the world agree on this carnage. No matter who is responsible for this, whether Hamas or Israel, the war should stop on innocents people. I have no comments on the pictures, since it tells all the story.

Hong Kong (.hk) is the most risky county TLD

McAfee has published a study in June 2008 about the malicious web site across the world. It shows an interesting information about the country TLDs (for example (.sa) for Saudi Arabia and (.ae) for UAE) and a generic TLDs (for example (.com) and (.info)). McAfee has tested 9.9 million web sites across the world; 4.1 % of the tested web sites rated as red (avoid) and yellow (use caution).

One of the most interesting information is that Hong Kong (.hk) country TLD is the most risky TLD in the world in 2008 ! 19.2 % of these red and yellow sites are belonged to .hk. China (.cn) scores the second risky country TLD with 11.8 %; Slovenia (.si), Norway (.no) and Japan (.jp) are the least-risky country TLD. For the generic TLD, .info is the most risiest one with 11.8!; .com scores the fourth risky generic TLD.

More and more interesting information are available in this amazing study; below is the study in PDF format:
http://us.mcafee.com/en-us/local/docs/Mapping_Mal_Web.pdf?cid=

Many thanks to Security Now podcast for mentioning this information. In addition, thanks to my friend Abdullah Al-Dosari who challenged me to addict listening to this show.

Mobily in Camp Nou

Yesterday I was watching the Classico match (El Clasico as it pronounced in the Spanish) between Bacelona and Real Madrid, and it was ended by a dramatic win for Barcelona over the guest team Real Madrid 2-0. Samuel Eto'o and Lionel Messi gave the host a new three points in the league race.

One thing was amazed me when I was watching this match that Mobily advertisements were appeared at Camp Nou stadium !

I'm not surprised seeing this ads, but I'm wondering how much did they pay to put it in Camp Nou ? (one of the most famous and expensive stadium in the world), in this match !? (one of the famous derby in the world), and in these locations!?

Does Mobily really benefit from this ads ? I hope so !!

الرمان ... المقاوم الأول لأمراض العصر

لا شك أن الخضروات و الفواكة تعتبر معجزة من معجزات الله سبحانة وتعالى، بما تحتويه من مكونات وعناصر غذائية مفيدة لجسم الكائن الحي. كما أنها تعتبر دواء طبيعي لكثير من أمراض العصر التي عجز الطب الحديث والقديم عن إيجاد حلول لشفائها أو حتى التقليل من دواعيها. غير أن هناك فاكهة تعتبر نموذجا حيا لقدرة الله على شفاء المرض أيا كانت أسبابه أو دواعيه و مصداقاً لقول المصطفى صلى الله عليه وسلم حينما قال: "ما أنزل الله داء إلا أنزل له شفاء". ألا وهي فاكهة الرمان.

الرمان فاكهة صيفية، موطنه الأصلي إيران وانتشر منها إلى بلاد الشام والجزيرة العربية والهند وحوض البحر المتوسط، ثم انتقل إلى اسبانيا والمكسيك وغيرهما. وزهرة الرمان حمراء رائعة الجمال تسمى “جلنار” وأشجاره تعمر إلى ما يقرب من الخمسين عاما، وتعطي الشجرة محصولا بعد زراعتها بثلاث سنوات ويكون أقصى محصول لها بعد ثماني سنوات، وتنضج ثمار الرمان في بداية شهر أغسطس/ آب وتستمر حتى نهاية شهر سبتمبر/ ايلول وتكثر هذه الفاكهة في منطقة البحر الأحمر، وقد استعملت بتوسع في الطب الشعبي في العديد من بلاد العالم، بل واعتبرت مقدسة في بعض الأديان. فقد جاء ذكر الرمان في القرآن الكريم ثلاث مرات وهي:

قوله تعالى: “وهو الذي أنزل من السماء ماء فأخرجنا به نبات كل شيء فأخرجنا منه خضرا نخرج منه حبا متراكبا ومن النخل من طلعها قنوان دانية وجنات من أعناب والزيتون والرمان مشتبها وغير متشابه انظروا إلى ثمره إذا أثمر وينعه إن في ذلكم لآيات لقوم يؤمنون” (الأنعام: 99).

وقوله تعالى: “وهو الذي أنشأ جنات معروشات وغير معروشات والنخل والزرع مختلفا أكله والزيتون والرمان متشابها وغير متشابه كلوا من ثمره إذا أثمر وآتوا حقه يوم حصاده ولا تسرفوا إنه لا يحب المسرفين”. (الأنعام: 141)

وأخيرا قول الله تعالى: “فيهما فاكهة ونخل ورمان” (الرحمن 68).

اليوم سأرصد خمسة أسباب لجعل الرمان الخيار الأول لكثير من أمراض هذا العصر:

1 - قلة السعرات الحرارية، و وفرة العناصر الغذائية. حيث أن حبة الرمان تحوي حوالي 105 سعرات حرارية فقط ! بالإضافة إلى كمية كافية من البوتاسيوم و قرام من الألياف و 10% من الكمية اليومية التي يحتاجها الجسم من فيتامين سي.

2- تزيد من صحة القلب، حيث تشير دراسة أقيمت على 45 شخصاً قاموا بتناول شراب الرمان يوميا لمدة ثلاثة أشهر أن معدل تدفق الدم إلى القلب قد زاد بمعدل 17%. أما بالنسبة لمرضى السكري، فقد أشارت دراسة إلى أن تناول الرمان لم يؤثر سلباً على معدل الجلوكوز في الدم و الكوليسترول، بل ساعد من تقليل خطر الإصابة بتصلب الشرايين.

3- تناول كوب من شراب الرمان يومياً يقي من الإصابة بداء الزهايمر، وهو مرض من أمراض الشيخوخة يصيب كبار السن ممن تجاوزوا سن الخامسة و الستون عاماً.

4- تعتبر فاكهة الرمان العلاج الأول لألآم المفاصل.

5- الرمان هو المقاوم الأول لسرطان البروستات ولكثير من أنواع السرطان، فقد أثبتت دراسة أجريت على رجل عمره 46 عاما في جامعة كاليفورنيا أن تناول الرمان يوميا يقلل من نسبة الإصابة بسرطان البروستات بمعدل أربع مرات. كما أنه علاج واعد لسرطان الثدي، وسرطان الرئة.

هذا بعض ما توصل إليه العلم الحديث من أسرار هذة الفاكهة العجيبة التي خصها الله تعالى في كتابة، وهو ما يجعلها من أهم الفواكة في نظام الإنسان الغذائي اليومي.

تم الإستعانة بالمواقع التالية:

tabi3i.org

lifescript.com

عيد ... سعيد

بالأمس ودعنا عيداً وغدا نستقبل عيدا جديداً. غداً هو أول أيام عيد الأضحى المبارك أعادة الله علينا وعلى الأمة الإسلامية بكل الخير والعافية والأمن والإستقرار. كم هي سريعة هذة الأيام، فعيد الفطر مر عليه حوالي 69 يوما ! ابتعدنا 69 يوما عن الدنيا، و اقتربنا 69 يوما من الأخرة. ترى ماذا أنجزنا في هذة الأيام ؟ وماهي الأحداث التي مرت بنا والتي كان لها الأثر الكبير سواء على المستوى الشخصي أو بشكل عام ؟ في مقالي هذا سوف أدون الأحداث التي مرت بي خلال هذة المدة على جميع المستويات.


- خلال هذة الأيام حصلت على شهادة الـ PMP، ففي يوم الإثنين 27 أكتوبر قمت بدخول الإمتحان المكون من 200 سؤال ومدته 4 ساعات، واجتزت و لله الحمد. على إثر هذا الحدث، تم تعييني في قسم إدارة المشاريع بالشركة، وهذة تعتبر خطوة كبيرة في حياتي المهنية فإدارة المشاريع تعتبر الجهة المسؤولة عن نجاح أو فشل أي مشروع.
- أيضا خلال هذة الأيام انهار سوق الأسهم السعودي ( إنهيار جديد )، ووصل إلى أدنى مستوى له منذ سنوات. هذا الإنهيار حسب المحللين كان بسبب الأزمة الإقتصادية العالمية، والبعض يربطها بسبب إنخفاض أسعار البترول ووصولها إلى مستوى الـ 45 دولار !
- في بداية شهر نوفمبر تم إنتخاب الرئيس الأمريكي ذو الأصول الإفريقية باراك أوباما. أوباما اجتاز الإنتخابات بنتيجة ساحقة ضد منافسة جون مكين، و يعتبر أول رئيس أمريكي من أصل إفريقي يصل إلى الرئاسة، وهو بذلك الفوز يكون قد كسرهيمنة الجمهوريين الذين استمروا في الرئاسة لعقود من الزمن.

هذة أبرز الأحداث التي مرت بي خلال هذة المدة، أتمنى من الله العلي القدير أن يعيد علينا وعليكم هذا العيد باليمن والبركة، وأن يعيننا على إستثمار أوقات فراغنا بكل ماهو مفيد لنا في ديننا ودنيانا، و كل عام وأنتم بخير.

Adware Business ... What ? & How ?

Couple of days back, I was listening to security now podcast presented by Steve Gibson. Steve is the owner of grc.com web site, and the SpinRite software - the industry's #1 hard drive data recovery. As usual, he was talking about many security topics, but one topic amazed me and I was so interested to dig down and explore more about. The topic was adware business.

Adware business is a way to customize the ads that is shown to the customer who is visiting a web page. Based on some information about the customer or the web page it self, the company that is running the adware business customizes the web page ads to be more relevant. The ISP enables the company to access these information, and off course he is getting paid. Today I will talk about some examples of the adware companies and how they are running their business.


Adzilla is a Vancouver, Canadian-based company running an Adware business. The company is buying the Zip code for the end user from the ISP, and stores it in a hardware called Zillacaster which is basically a proxy server with some extra feature. Adzilla then sell the Zip code to the advertisers and web publisher in order for them to customize the web page ads to be as relevant as possible. By doing this, the customer will get more relevant ads without disclosing the customer identity. Off course the Zip code is an indicator of the people wealth and ethnicity. Adzilla calls this technology “Caller ID for the internet”.



Google AdSense is another technology to run the adware business. Instead of getting the customer information, AdSense do some analysis for the wab page content (it called crawl) and then deliver text and image ads that are relevant to the web page content.



AdSense also allows the web publisher to put a Google web search inside his web page. Every time the page visitor uses this web search tool, the customer is getting paid.




NebuAd is an American on line advertising company. The company installs surveillance hardware called deep packet inspection in the ISP network, analyze every customer packet and monitor the customer browsing habits. In addition, the company uses an ad injection system that allows the ISP to add their own ads into the web page, regardless of the advertisement deal that is already exist between the web publisher and the advertisers.

"This data is stripped of personal and personally identifiable information and held in aggregate only -- NebuAd does not take information from ISP data systems, and does not share any data with ISP's, so no data concentration occurs" -NebuAD

Issues log vs. Progress Report Confusion !

In the project management world there are plenty of terms that make the project managers confused, and drive him crazy. Issues log and progress report are one of the main two project management terms that almost every project manager get confused between them. Lets have the definition for each one of them:

- The issues log is a list of all issues might arise during the execution of the project. It should include the criticality of the issue, the responsible person and the due date to resolve this issue. The issues log helps the project manager to track each issue, and keep the project under control. The issues included in the issues log were not part of the project activities !

- The progress report is a tabulated project information in a time bases (daily, weekly, mothly etc). For example, the project manager might sent to the stakeholders all the activities and milestones that have been achieved during the last week, the planned due date and the actual start and finish dates for each activity. This helps the project manager to show the progress of the project, and find determine any deviation from the project time baseline.

From the previous definitions, we can clearly differentiate between the two terms. The issues log can show all the project issues, blockers, and any defects that arise during the execution phase and might delay the project, while the progress report is only used to show the stakeholders what have been achieved during a certain time, and is there any deviation from the baselines.

Accordingly, the key stakeholders in the project are not interested to see the issues log and in the same time they want to see the progress report regularly to be aware of the project execution status. The progress report might be helpful for the team members and some of the stakeholders who want to drill down and be aware of every single details of the project. This does not mean the issues log should be hidden from the key stakeholder, the project manager might need them and use thier power to solve some major issues.

I wrote this article because I have seen a lot of project managers who mix between issues log and progress report. In my opinion, the disadvantages of doing so are as follow:

1. Unnecessarily involvement and awareness of the high management in the project issues. The high management want to see only the status of the project milestones, and a short comments about each milestone
   
2. Team members will be confused, because they are responsible to track the issues and close them on time. The issues log should be clear, and as accurate as possible to avoid any misunderstanding
3. Reporting the issues log to the not interested people is a form of bad communication. The project manager is responsible to show the project documents on time and to the respective people only !
   

The issues log is disclosed to only the team members and to the stakeholders who can solve this issues, not to every one; while the progress report is reported to the key stakeholders who want to see the status of the project activities & milestones.


Below is a templates of the issues log & progress report.
Issues Log Template
Progress Report Template

SkyFire ... Great mobile web browser

Today I have a new mobile web browser that will let you feel like you are using your PC. It is a free web browser and it was founded in April 2006 by Nitin Bhandari and Erik Swenson. SkyFire has a lot of features as mentioned in their website:

1. Mobile browsing exactly like your PC
2. The real web, served-up right
3. Go anywhere, see anything
4. Blazing fast
5. Easy to use
6. Quick content and simple search
7. Plenty of handy features
8. On the phone you own - and free!

SkyFire works for Windows Mobile 5 & 6, and Symbian Series 60 3rd Edition (Nokia E & N series). You can download it from your mobile by accessing the following web page:

SkyFire

Enjoy ...

Who will be better for Technology, McCain or Obama ? !

Although I'm not interested in the politic news, I was following the U.S. election events lately. The Americans are trying to understand each candidate's direction in many fields before they can vote. For example economy, national security, terrorism wars and health are the hottest topics that had the most debate in the presidential arguments; but I never heard a debate about the Technology direction!

I read an article about this topic, and it was interesting that the candidate's direction in the Technology field effects the voter's decision.

(Below is the article link)

McCain vs. Obama: Who would be better for tach?

أختي حتشتغل رقاصة

لا أعتقد أن الموضوع بحاجة إلى الكثير من الكلام، أترككم مع إبداع سعيد صالح في مسرحية العيال كبرت.