Egyptian Leechers and the sharing concept

Away from the problems of DSL service in Egypt or the copyrights violations caused by us
A very bad trait of us Egyptians on the internet is prevalent. Its the concept of not sharing what is downloaded. I admit I used to do so back in the dial up days. But at the end of these days I used to set my uploading speed at least at 1kb/sec at the times I was connected to the internet. I was still reluctant to waste my bandwidth for pesky guys who roam around the internet to download silly files. But after a single incident of being blocked, don't remember the program, may be mIRC or DC++, I had to think about it. I was using ISDN back then. I had to think about it. How did I get these files at the first place? Didn't I get them from other people who were "wasting" their bandwidth for gentlemen like me? Shame on me. If I get these files from people, for free, I also have to give them for free. If we don't share we won't be able to find anything at the first place.


One other point that is still have to be considered is the shared connections. A lot of people who have their DSL shared with their neighbours. This is because of DSL being expensive, even compared to countries with higher income than Egypt and have their DSL costs at 1/4th of our country's as I discussed in one of my posts before. A typical example would be of 3-4 apartments sharing the a 256Kbps connection. After the recent reduction some would have upgraded to 512. Many of these PCs would have sharing programs active, so this would kill the connection for them gives them the opportunity of sharing files among them and even playing games.

I hope my fellow Egyptians at least do a 1:1 ratio in the files they download. Keeping in mind that still many use these programs blindly not caring about the speed or anything and may continue seeding or sharing without their knowledge, there are a lot more curious users who would like to tamper with settings and even mess things up (LOL).

Some people would come and talk about the nature of the files being downloaded. This would be a hard question. Morally and religiously. Nah I am not talking about porn here. I am talking about the songs, movies, programs, games and even eBooks. Am I really stealing when I download them? Aren't they sold for money? Aren't they now readily available in Egypt? If I consider them expensive, is it morally correct to illegaly download them for free? Duuuuuuuuuuh. I am starting to feeling guilty about that. Well, let's keep that for some other time. Balash waga3 demagh oO.

RIAA and MPAA, HELLOOO :p

Another Egyptian Train Disaster

Two trains collided this morning coming from delta during the morning rush hour at 7.15am. Number of deaths so far ranges from 51 as of 11.15am - 8.15 GMT, according to the Egyptian, and as many as 80 according to Egyptian Security sources who said so to BBC. About 160 were injured. Rescue and evacuations continue at this moment including the separations of the metal bodies of the trains. Main reasons behind the accident are attributed to the overspeeding of the second train or malfunction in the semaphores. Anyways, it is because of negligence and corruption. The victims are the poor people who are not seeking their rights and seem to be appeased by all the bad things happening to them.

As usual, president Mubarak is following the incident, instead of being proactive and fighting corruption and improving the affairs of his country. Rather he is busy with some more important issues.

Damn, these images from the deadly train accident in Badrasheen, more than 4 years ago is still vivid in my memory. 360 were burnt to death, although unofficial sources say upto a 1000 were perished.

Here is a link to Reuters article.
Better coverage, more info and tragic pictures can be found at the arabist.

Update: An eyewitness living at the site on Nile News said that the fire trucks were constraining the rescue efforts and it was a chaos when people gathered around to watch what is going on. Its a habbit when an accident happens that curiousity drives people to watch and hinder rescue efforts in many accidents.

1.00PM: number of deaths reach 56 according to health minister. It seems that they will catch up with the 80+ figure previously announced by security forces.





*Both Pictures from Reuters

Mubarak and Asad: two dictators but...

The war is over. The brawl between Israel and Hizballah came to an end. Away from the debate whether it was worth it or not but this was my first Isaeli conflict in which I don't feel that I am in favour of it. I didn't feel it was my "war". I remember back in school 6 years ago when the intifada erupted and amount of feelings one had and how I wanted the Egyptian army to go to war. This time I was not happy for that conflict.

Now, the syrian "Gallant" president, Dr. Bashar AL Asad, MD., has given a speech of victory. He talked about the Hizballah victory against Israel. I don't know calling the 3-9 billion dollars damage in Lebanon a victory, the complete doomsday demolition of tens of thousands of residential units, according to Mr. Nasarallah a victory, the 1000+ innocent lives a victory, the expected disarmament of Hizballah a victory or the misery in which almost a million of people now live in. Not only that, but he called the arab leaders, Mubarak and Abadallah, what translates to "cowards or not men". Yeah. Muabark could be a dictator, a ruthless ruler with a bad record of human rights and poor leadership style and a lot of hate amongst his people, including me, if not one of the worst rulers in the history of Egypt but he is certainly much better than you. He is better than your father. Mubarak may have up to hundreds thousands in his unlawful prisons and his police are treating people badly, but he is not like you or your father.


I don't want to say that, uggh, but Mubarak lead the air force in the 1973 October"Tishrin" war. He managed to keep the peace during his reign. Look at you and your father. You failed in that war and failed us. Syria was one of the reasons behind Egypt's weak point in the war. Yet, Sinai is liberated and look at your Golan. It is still occupied. What did you to get it back? Instead of supporting Hizballah, why don't you have Hizballah fighting for you if your army is full of a bunch of sissies? Why let other peoples suffer instead of you?

I have watched a couple of documentaries about the Golan Heights. Israel is doing a great job there, as what they have done to Sinai. Away from the wars, I really respect Israel. I have another post that I was preparing before the war about a simple comparison on two adjacent areas in Egypt and Israel. Not to mention the software developing giants in Israel. Doesn't Google ring a bell?

PS. Isn't a coincident that Bashar Al Asad and Hasan Nasrallah both have rhotacism, the mispronounciation of letter 'r'.

Update: Dr. Bashar was the first to express condolences to Mubarak only 3 hours after the train tragedy on August 21st.

Nerd test...ugggghh

If i have taken this test 6 years ago, I would have scored much higher. Being a nerd is not that good. This is quite an improvement. The more I forget my academic life and get more involved in my job that will be possibly unrelated to my undergraduate studies, the less I will score and get rid of the nerdiness. Untill first year of university I knew more than 100 elements of the periodic table and other weird stuff.(Crazy)