Returning from the Dead. What next?

Well, it has been almost 4 years since I have started this blog. I don't know why have stopped writing in it. Obviously, by skimming through the dozen of posts I have written, most of my posts are about rants, criticizing, pathetic comparisons, some personal diaries and some technical posts. This would lead to the conclusion that I am not focused and this blog should be specialized. Well when I started this blog 4 years ago, it was first meant to be a bit political. Then I started 4 other blogs for technical and personal posts. Then I decided to let it all be in one. I was treating it as way to think out loudly or to log some diary entries but online.

Anyways, I lost my interest in writing later on after I graduated, so I ignored this blog. But many times I feel like I want to write down some thoughts. Back in time, at the the height of this blog, when I used to feel that I wanted to write, it was I had an urge to write just like the urge to pee and holding it for a long time in the cold. I would rush back home to and turn on my computer, and keep on writing and writing. I would format my text, add pictures and hyperlinks. Somehow I treated the post as if its a writing assignment that I like. I hated these stupid essays. Although I regret not paying attention to the writing courses, but the instructors and their topics were really boring and not appealing.

These days, however, I started feeling that I want to write again. I want to express some inner feelings and thoughts. Some of these thoughts are religious, other are philosophical. Hang on, what the heck is philosophical and why I am calling them so? May be this is what I call challenging dogmatic teachings..dogmatic? Basically, a lot of controversial thoughts has been going around in my head. I decided to let some of these escape to this hideout. Yes, I still call this place a hideout although I am aware some of the people I know have stumbled upon this blog because I stupidly used my nickname to sign these posts.

Well, giving myself more freedom in expressing myself, and given the fact this place has been quiet for some good time, allowing it disappear from google's first page when searched for with its title, I decided to change my pen name. I choose Lazarus. Why that name? Because as I said, I decided to revive this blog, bringing it out from the dead. Jesus Christ revived a guy called Lazarus and brought him back from the dead. I like the hebrew form of the name more, but Lazarus has a better sound in my head. I am not contradicting myself here. Sounding better in my head doesn't have to make me like it more. Actually, the name Satan has a better sound and its easier and more lighter for pronounciation than the word angel.

So what are my next steps or posts would be about? While browsing through the links in dashboard and refamiliarizing myself with the management settings of the blogs, I found a couple of draft posts. I think I should still post these. duuuh, I have spent more than an hour writing this post. That's enough for my return.

Firefox 2 crashed!!

After less than 3 weeks of being installed on my computer, Firefox 2 crashed. I was only working with 4 tabs. Two of these tabs were unreached pages, the third being a Google search page and the 4th was an online football text game which uses an extension. I was also using 2 other extensions, one of them being the great Adblock. This is a bad omen, I am not sure if it for me or for Mozilla. I shall send screen shots of the returned addresses could be this a potential buffer overflow problem or just a random crash.




Bare in mind that I have been using Firefox for more than 2 years during which it crashed 3 times and mostly because It was working under very extreme conditions, on a pentium 3 PC with more than 14 tabs on one occasion and on another was loading 4 videos from YouTube.com.



Now let's recap on my last year's usage pattern. Since my last post, I started devoting more time to Linux. By the end of last year or specifically beginning of 2006, Firefox became my main browser with the exception for the few websites that don't support Firefox. By the summer, I gave up with the features that need IE and Firefox became the only browser I use. Also my usage of Linux soared after I installed Ubuntu and got a new PC. I also started SSHing to my computer from university. Firefox never crashed on Linux at all whether on Fedora Core 3 or on Ubuntu. I think I will be publishing a post about Ubuntu soon, My most favourite Linux distro, and the 4th that I've tried!!

New DSL prices in Egypt: July 2006

The Ministry of Communcations and Information Technology (MCIT) in cooperation with the National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority have announced the new prices of the crappy DSL services in Egypt that will comply with the requests of people so that idiots like me don't complain of the shitty service that is provided at 3 times the price of neighbouring countries for 1/3rd the speeds and at a much lower quality.

As we know, in authoritarian regime controlled countries, its the government that sets the prices not the privately owned companies so the service providers have to abide by the set price else they will face legal actions as with what happened with the under performing linkdotnet 4 monthes ago when they reduced their prices in one of their promotion offers.

Anyways, let's go ahead with the new tarrif that introduced a capped bandwidth that is facing strong oppositions in most countries that apply them and they are on their way to extinction yet they are being introduced in Egypt and, of course, with improper calculation on the side of the ISP presumably.

256/64: Unlimited Bandwidth, 95LE/month (16.5 USD) down from 150LE.
512/128: Unlimited Bandwidth, 190LE/month (33 USD) down from 250LE.
1Mb: Unlimited Bandwidth 380LE/month (66 USD) down from 450LE.

The new capped bandwindth:

1 Mb: 10 GB/month for 150LE/month and each additional 1 GB for 8LE
2 Mb: 15 GB/Month for 200 LE/month and each additional 1GB for 8LE

No gurantee for real speed. Currently I am a 512Kbps user and my average speed is 15-25KB/sec, exactly to that of a 256 or even appraoching the ISDN speeds :S

As a last note, although Egypt has an estimate of 5 million users online, the actual number of connected phone lines whether through dial up or dsl is less than a million of the 10 million homes. This has been almost constant for the last year or more because the growth of internet usage in Egypt is now limited by the number of PCs.

DSL Customer support...Internet in Egypt sucks

What the hell is wrong with dsl service in Egypt? I found out its not only me with LinkDotNet, or my friends who I referred them to LinkDotnet as well. Its also other fellows with TEData and Raya. A friend of mine has a lot of problems with TEData on the Heliopolis exchange. Another friend in Mohandessin has a lot of problems with Raya.

Anyways, the last three months with LinkDotNet saw the first two customer personnel visiting us at home. This time we(my family and I) were not complaining of the speed, but of the line itself. The DSL line itself is getting disconnected a lot of times.

Here is a a typical conversation other the phone:
Me: My internet is down
He: Please Switch off your modem for 10 sec and switch it on again.

Me: I did that already and the line is still down.
He: OK, restart your computer and press F8 and go into safe mode with networking.

Me: By the way, This is my 10th call this week, and I already tried that with another operating system called Linux.
He: Well, we are checking what's wrong from our side, are you in yet?
Me: Yes!!
He: OK, now go and start a download
Me: From which site?
He: go to yahoo.com and choose games

Me: ....
He: Are you there?
Me: No, the page hasn't loaded yet
He: OK, i will be back shortly

then I listen to some darn music
5 minutes later after I start downloading at 0.5KB/sec

Me: I started downloading and the speed is horrible
He: Start another download

Me: it will take a lot of time to go to the other page.
2 mins later
Me: The speed now is 0.1KB/sec
then the DSL line gets disconnected and reconnects

He: OK, I will send you someone to check on the cables on your side
Me: But already someguy visited us last week and told me that you have a problem
He: No, we have to check your side again!!

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When the guy came, he checked the splitter, connected his modem and said that everything is perfect on our side. He tried to download and the speed this time was about 15kb/sec , 30% of what shoul be my speed. They will try to fix the connection from their side.
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But I thought the problem was with LinkDotNet only, however, when I asked my friends, nearly all ISPs are having problems with speed or line consistency. Yesterday, EgyNet which provides its services through SofiCom during working hours. EgyNet is rumored to be looking for an investor to buy it, possibly an international partner. If you are are intrested contact NTC, National Telecommunications Corporations.

TEData, is supposed to have less problems in the near future as they have upgraded their international bandwidth to 3 Gbps as announced on their website 6 weeks ago. This move will relief the customers' woes and improve speed.