Android - The New Windows

Apple did it again, this time in the mobile phone market. Back in 1984 when Steve Jobs launched the first personal computer, it was an impressive, closed and expensive piece of technology. A couple of years later, Microsoft launched Windows on top of its already popular MS-DOS and this GUI being flexible and less expensive was very quickly adopted by all leaving Apple behind with only the small high-end market.

This time, back in 2007 Apple revolutionized the mobile phone industry with the iPhone, again a closed system with a restrictive App Store but then in 2009, Google launched its Google Phone based on Android - a mobile OS similar to iPhone OS except that it is open source; therefore anyone can see the source codes, customize it and develop apps for it. Since then the popularity of Android has not stopped growing and at times even surpassing iPhone sales in 2010.

With popularity comes vulnerability! As was the case for Windows desktop, when an OS has 95% of market share, it becomes the designated target of viruses and all other spywares and malwares. So will Android when it will dominate the mobile phone market, and Android being open will make it more vulnerable to such threats. Some have already forecast the year 2011 as the year of smartphone malware.

Is Wikileaks the Weapon of Mass Destruction of the Information age?

After the 9/11 terror attacks, we were all prepared at least psychologically to face terrorism in almost any form including hijacked airplanes, nuclear weapons, biochemical weapons, car bombs and mail bombs but none ever suspected that confidential information.. quarter of a million of them in the form of cable leaks released little by little over a week period by Wikileaks could have a much worse impact than an act of terrorism itself.

Although there is no loss of lives, nobody really knows what the real impact of this leak would be on our lives in the future, now that a huge amount of backroom diplomacy practices and opinions have been revealed and that's only Day 2 of a whole week of expected releases.

This will be like playing a strategy game as a team while the opposing team know all your strategies and future moves and you know nothing about theirs. Tough! This is no petty game. This is all about politics and foreign policy.

Apple at the peak of its history

It's no wonder now that Apple has many more bright years ahead with all-time record revenue and earnings from the sales of the Iphone which almost doubled from 7.1 million to 14.1 million year-over-year, record selling numbers of Macs up 27% to 3.9 million this year and the Ipad, a gadget announced in February, launched in April and sold a staggering 4.2 million in just 6 months. The result is an all-time high share price floating above the 300 mark from just around 200 at the beginning of the year. That's up 50% year-to-date.

There's no sign of this going down anytime soon as big confusion continues to build-up in the Android camp. Because of its open-source nature, major vendors end up creating different flavors of Android for their mobile devices thus guaranteeing nightmares for Apps developers to develop and test their Apps on all Android flavors that are out there. On the other side, Iphone remain close-source with the one and only App store and pretty straightforward App development.

Last minute news: Yet another Android-based phone - The PlayStation Phone!
Of course.. why not? Since gaming on the Iphone is becoming increasingly popular, Sony definitely need to enter this market to stay in the game.

Evidence of water on Moon

On 9 October 2009, the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission threw a heavy projectile to a shadowed crater on the moon while the thrower satellite stayed above to capture and analyse the plume and debris caused by the impact.

Report of that analysis now show that the Moon contains not only water but also other compounds including hydrocarbons, sulphur and carbon dioxide. Before that evidence, the moon was considered to be a dry satellite.

This finding is very interesting considering the fact that to bring 1 gallon of water from earth to the moon may be as costly as $100000. Also, with water present, the important fuel - Hydrogen can be made available, thus eventually making the moon with its lower gravity than earth an ideal launching ground for further less costly space exploration.

Now the race is becoming more interesting.. the Bush administration rightly planned to go for the moon first and then use it as a launching pad for further exploration to Mars. But the Obama administration had no choice than to scrap that plan due the unprecedented economic recession. Both were right but now with the new findings, my guess is that the Obama administration will reconsider their plan for the moon.

A good point to note is that we confirmed there is water on Mars well before confirming same on the moon in our own backyard. It's not surprising though considering all the investment made to explore Mars rather than the Moon. This too will change now.. there is still much to discover on our Moon

Some reports have already said that we may find gold, silver and mercury. It's just a matter of time now until we know more if ever there will be a gold mine there. :P

Canadian International Air Show 2010

2010 Pakistan Floods

The 2010 Pakistan floods began in July 2010 following heavy monsoon rains in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, Punjab and Balochistan regions of Pakistan and affected wide parts of Pakistan. At one point, approximately one-fifth of Pakistan's total land area was underwater.[3][4][5] According to Pakistani government data the floods directly affected about 20 million people, mostly by destruction of property, livelihood and infrastructure, with a death toll of close to 2,000. The number of individuals affected by the flooding exceeds the combined total of individuals affected by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake. I donated $30 to Médecins sans Frontières despite being unemployed at that time. My prayers go to all the people affected.

FIFA World Cup 2010

This edition of the world cup was a real success. All the South African stadiums were fabulous and we all now know what a Vuvuzela is. At the final match I was cheering for the Netherlands (i dunno, i've always like their orange colour) but it was Spain who made it. That's all good, they very well deserved it for having great soccer teams like Real Madrid and Barcelona, experienced coach Vincente Del Bosque and individual talent like David Villa, Iker Casillas the No.1 goalkeeper and others. It was the first time that Spain reached the final and even win the title to become the second team after Brazil to win the Cup in another continent than their own and still they won it with their local coach. All said, they deserve the international recognition for all their soccer achievements including Euro 2008.

For me the best player of the tournament was Diego Forlan of Uruguay who really mastered the Jabulani Adidas football with repeated goal scoring free-kicks to bring his team in the semi-finals. My thought also goes to Germany, who to my eyes is the best tactical soccer team ever with their eternal third place in recent succeeding World Cups.

Living cell created from custom-made DNA

Imagine having a host cell, emptying its nucleus and replacing it with re-engineered DNA - removing unwanted genes and adding wanted ones among millions others of them so that you can shape the characteristics of that new cell and succeed in making it to replicate. Well that's what happened last week says Craig Venter, a genome pioneer.

The last such milestone was the creation of Dolly the sheep back in 1996 through cloning. This time instead of using the whole genome of a cell, they just customised it using computer-aided genetic engineering.

This great achievement opens new avenues in creating new living organisms which never existed in nature before which can be used to accomplish very specific tasks much harder for machines to do. Craig Venter gave examples such as fuel-producing bacteria, algae that can consume higher levels of carbon dioxide, or more efficient ways of cleaning polluted water.

Of course, in order to take full benefit of such technology mankind should be comfortable once again in the creating & killing of new species of living organisms.

Although there is still no creation of life from scratch, this is more like altering the software that run on the hardware of life, making it do things that no living organisms can do up to now.

Needless to say, such a technique represent a great threat if it falls in wrong hands or even if just a mistake or human error happens. Therefore as in 1996 government regulations needs to be put in place ASAP.

And now the question that remains is: What does it take to create life from scratch? Maybe it's just plain impossible to create life from scratch since when a baby is conceived, he is always conceived from living parents i.e. it takes two already living cells in order to create a new living one.

Or maybe it's possible and that it takes some variables that are still unknown to mankind. But Im still convinced that there should be a way how it all started, may it be from asteroids or whatever, it can surely be reproduced successfully in a lab à la LHC

Volcano Eyjafjallajokull rules

The Icelandic volcano provoked an unprecedented havoc across the airline industry in late April 2010. Intense volcanic ash cloud and south eastern winds caused  major Europe airports to be grounded including Heathrow, Nordic countries, France, Spain & even Russia. They remain grounded for up to a week while the airline companies suffocated economically day by day leaving millions of passengers stranded all over the world.

This reminds me of 2 things. 1) Nature always has the last word.  2) The increasing dependency we have on airline travel.

This make me think that we are often over-dependent on a particular system. Just imagine a 5-day total internet blackout! Even if that's less probable, it remains scary!

How about the Yellowstone caldera erupting?  Well, forget it!

BP rig massive oil leak in Gulf of Mexico

I'm not worried at all about the massive oil leak in the gulf of Mexico because everyone is going to win in this disaster except the earth and the local fishermen.

From what I know, BP alone can deal with 50 such oil leaks given the fact he made huge profits year over year, even record profits until 2 years ago in 2008. Oil companies like Bp, Exxon Mobil and Shell make millions of dollars per second! That's why I'm not worried for them.

President Obama recently extend the atlantic-side oil drill-able area. That's why it's in BP best interest to fully finance the repercussions of this massive oil leak else he won't get privileged access to the new drillable area and his competitors will.

Furthermore, millions of dollars are already being spent every year to find new oil reserves in difficult areas. What we have now in the gulf of Mexico is an active reserve spurting thousand of barrels a day which is so apparent that we can see it from space and is just waiting to be exploited. It's out of question to just block the leak in an unexploitable way by means of nukes etc. Whatever the time it takes to get control over the leaks is justifiable because there are loads of money to make. So its just a question of time and time alone, these oil companies know best in situation like this. They have the resources it takes and have the best engineers in this field. They are the expert and we just have to wait and see how they transform such a chaotic situation into a profitable one.

As for the massive oil spills over the sea, this will give life to small entrepreneurs who will recycle the oil slicks and restore the disturbed fauna and flora over 10 or so years. End of story.

Motorola Milestone

Now that's what I call an interesting mobile phone..

Based on the open Android platform as oppose to the closed iphoneOS and hence has full Flash support.

With a full slide on keyboard and a wide tactile screen you get the best of both Blackberry and iphone-like input experiences on the one same phone.

Built-in accelerometer to detect movements that enable the phone to switch display in portrait and landscape, also great for gaming control.

A decent 5 MP camera with the indispensable flash to operate in dim light conditions.

Plays major audio & video formats.

Has WiFi 802.11 b/g in case to don't have an unlimited data package.

and it's a 3G phone.

What else would you need? It's all in there.. and is indeed a milestone. I'll buy that!

Motorola Milestone 

4% Neanderthal 96% Homo-sapiens

Max Planck Institute recent finding concludes that humans who live outside of Africa have 1-4% of Neanderthal DNA and that those who live in Africa are 100% from Homo-sapiens.

Things seems to be a little clearer now, this is how I see it:-

It all makes sense when you consider that the genome difference between humans and chimpanzees were found to be around 1% and then later revised 10x to around 10%.

Basically humans vary so much in skin colour and body traits all around the world. For such a configuration to happen there should have been 'extremes' and then a blend among these 'extremes'. Think of it like a black & white TV set. It displays black, white and different shades of grey.

On one hand you have the Neanderthal in the icy european north with bright blue eyes, fair skin and straight hair and on the other hand you have the Homo-sapiens in hot central Africa with dark eyes, black skin and coiled hair. Then at some point in time the two species co-existed at a converging area most probably the middle-east, they interbred to give birth to the early human explorers.

The new breeds explored different parts of the world at different time intervals (10,000 years) and their respective climate sculptured what we now know as babylonians, persians, indians, chinese or even aboriginal Australians. My guess is the further north the region is, the greater the Neanderthal DNA content. Therefore I would say that Europe & Russia have a 4% Neanderthal DNA content, Mongolia & China 3%, India 2%, Australian Aboriginal 1%, Africa & Madagascar 0%.

Note the skin colour variation from white in Europe & Russia (4%) to black in Aboriginal Australia (1%). Perhaps our skin colour is determined within the 4% Neanderthal DNA that we may have. 4% is huge compared to the initially thought 1% DNA difference between human and chimps.

Note: Im no scientist, the above is just the big picture as i see it with all the possible inaccuracies.

Bon Jovi - Keep the faith (live)

My words on the iPad

Everyone has his views on Apple's iPad, here is mine:-

iPad is yet another luxury gear whose success relies on how close it is to itself. It will surely and brilliantly suit all people non-techie needs and will make BUYING anything as easy as possible (That's the only revolution here). So everything will be possible with the iPad, if the solution is not available for free, you just buy the app/song/book/magazines/concert tickets whatever. This closed model is of course very appealing to all businesses and hence adopted by all.

All the frenzy around the iPad looks very promising, which means that the IT sector still has its golden years ahead.

The ban on Adobe's Flash is purely a business decision which affects directly the web landscape and that's why all the photos i posted on the blog won't appear on the iPad. Thats lame but i wonder for how long will Apple resist when new competitors are entering the couchpad market with Flash enabled.

Bottom-line I already have the smaller iPod Touch which fit perfectly in my jean back pocket, i will not buy a bigger iPad but i will not refuse an iPad as a gift either.. (Note: I don't read books and when i surf the web I have 80 tabs open in my browser)  What I will buy are some Apple shares if I can get the money ;) and some Android-based devices which look more open and versatile yet promising.

Niagara Thunder waters

2010 Haiti Earthquake

12 January 2010 Haiti was hit by an earthquake of magnitude 7. The whole country was paralysed and the estimated death toll is around 230000. I could not stay helpless and I donated $50 to the Red Cross. My prayers go to all people affected.