Ahmad Hadeed's Blog

Throughout my experience in life, I’ve came to a conclusion time ago that seems to prove it self on regular bases. While the title might be self explanatory to “geeks” and “network professionals” or at least would be easier to understand once you know what I’m talking about.

Girls talk & blabber too much! News spread like fire, gossips and rumors just spreads between all of them. If a girl is notified of something, she goes telling everybody about it, just like a hub!

For non network professionals, a hub is a network device that receives data & broadcast it to all connected devices on the network, whether it was their data packets or not everyone gets a copy of it.

You should be getting a part of the picture by now.

Hub

On the other hand however, boys are more careful when they speak, they speak less & they are more intelligent when it comes to the concept of spreading news. Tongues do not slip fast & they do not broadcast everything they hear, that’s why they are more like switches and routers.

Switches and routers are more intelligent devices in a network, received data are only transferred to a specific address depending on a lookup table that is called an ARP table. This way only the desired destination receives that certain desired data.

Switch

The bottom line here is … well I guess you already know it.

P.S: Another thing you should know here, though packets transferred through hubs are usually of a good quality, news spread by girls tend to mutate during transmission & original content quality degrade severely after few transmissions.

A friend told me that I have to write about my feelings & impressions after switching to fully legal.
My iPOD only contains legal music now, my computer still have some tracks here & there that I didn’t have time to remove, but I’m not listening to any pirated stuff.
As for software, I do not use any pirated software. Though I might still have some installed on Windows here or there, lost track of them but I’ll be removing them as soon as I discover them.
This also goes for the videos, the thing is that I’m a bit messy when it comes to files, I got tens of folders here & there and on many hard drives & partitions, so it is a bit hard to keep track & remove them in time.

Am I missing anything?
Well, not really. I’m not addicted to certain series to begin with but I would probably have problem with music if I do not find what I want in tracks if you know what I mean.
iTunes is probably the best retail store when it comes to music, but Kuwait’s iTunes store sucks as I mentioned in an earlier post.
I’m currently relying on Amazon’s MP3 store to purchase all music tracks that I want. I’ve already got disappointed trying to find a certain track yesterday, the CD was available to purchase but nothing to download, though I have the CD (original), I wanted to gift a track to a friend, thought I’d get it original. Yeah yeah probably your thinking “this guy is nuts!”.
I’ll tell you to think of whatever you want, as long as I know I’m doing the right thing I don’t care! 😛

It feels great to be living legal, knowing that you aren’t stealing others work. You also feel proud being different.

Long time ago, almost as long as we’ve been using computer, listening to music & watching movies, we’ve been using pirated software, listening to pirated music & watching pirated movies.

Why is that? Because no one told us it’s wrong and because all people around you used to copy music (casset days), share computer games on floppies or cds & when you go to buy a movie it’s most probably copied.

Well, time has come to change. Why the change?
It’s simply for religious, moral & ethical reasons.
Since all pirated stuff are essentially stolen, it all makes sense.
The bottom line here is, if you want it, buy it!

Some of people would go around in circles justifying the reason of them downloading music over the internet saying that a guy has purchased it & then distributed it.
If someone is actually making stealing easier for you, it doesn’t justify that you steal. The guy doesn’t own the music buy purchasing it, he can listen to it but cannot publish it.
People forget the fact that even soft copies such as software, music & videos are actually stuff you sell, just like a car except that the car cannot be duplicated freely. So you have to pay for another one in order to give it to a friend right? While a song is just copied.

Imagine two companies, a hardware & software vendors.
Both are making effort to manufacture & sell their products, yet the software would be loosing due to piracy, it is just not fair.

We can keep talking about the problem but the solution is to start by yourself.

I’ve been telling my friends that I’ve set a goal for myself, I’m getting rid of all pirated software, music & videos by 1st of January 2010.
I’m already using Linux with a lot of Free & OpenSouce software since 2007 so I don’t really have to worry about software much.
I’m not a fan of many series nor movies, but I like to own some stuff, so I do not have a big issue with movies either.
My main problem here is music, I’ve got an iPod but Kuwait’s iTunes store sucks! It doesn’t have any of the songs I want, it cannot even get the cover pages of the cd’s I’ve ripped.
I got about 35 CD’s didn’t get any of the album arts, not Arabic, not English, not even Yanni, one of the most known artists in New Age music.
I’ve come to know that Amazon has an MP3 store which I’m thinking to give it a try, currently I’m moving all pirated music files I own and which I really want to keep into a “to replace” directory, I won’t use any of the files but would either do a list of them or keep them there till I buy the original & delete the pirated file. A list looks better to be honest, cause the file might tempt you to click it. I think I’ll go with the list.

I must spend some good time on this, today is 31st Dec 2009, less than one day left. It’s not going to be easy, but everything begins with few steps.

Some friends are supportive, some against the idea & some is making fun of it, but hey! Legal is legal.
I believe what I’m doing is right no matter what justifications you give to “steal”.

I hope I’ll be posting some images of the CDs I’m getting rid of & posting the progress on the 1st of January 2010.

Till later…

Ok I’ll start by saying I almost freaked out I thought I’ve destroyed my blog. Yes I do not have much, but didn’t want to create one from scratch again.
I’ve just installed a plugin to support SSL admin logins, tried to login but failed. Started searching for a way to disable plugins without having to login, the solution was to delete the plugin files using an FTP access to the directories. Wonder what would ppl with WordPress account would do if they got in similar trouble.

Anyways …

Has been sometime now, I’ve finally got a job, not what I want but better than nothing. I currently work at MEW “Ministry of Electricity & Water”. I work in Town DCC (Town District Control Center).
Basically, we monitor & control the electrical network of Kuwait city and other districts.
In Kuwait, there is the NCC “National Control Center” that’s the famous green tower next to the 5th ring road and four other DCCs. Jabriya DCC, Town DCC, Jahra DCC & Shuaiba DCC.

I want to thank Nosayba for this migration, though it is a sad story behind her migration & mine.

She lost her blog account on Blogger & migrated to WordPress & then advised me about it.

Thanks Nosayba & wish you the best with your new blog.