Are you a Computer Geek !?

THis iS mY ScOrE:

IPS Before or After the Firewall

One of the frequent questions in the security design is whether to deploy the inline IPS's (Intrusion Prevention Systems) before the firewalls - i.e. between the Firewall and the Gateway Router - or behind it. The two options are valid; however if you don't want to get loads of false positives in your IPS then you have to put it behind the Firewall as many of this traffic will be blocked by the Firewall, so the IPS don't have to look in it. I also prefer this design as the Firewalls are more robust systems by nature - most of the IPS are hardened Linux Servers while firewalls are often Hardware Based - so they can handle the high traffic loads - DoS, DDoS, and any unwanted traffic - and block them before they reach the IPS.

Do you Skype ?

Skype has been very popular lately helping people make phone call (PC2PC, PC2Phone, or even Phone2PC). The PC2PC part of it is free and has very good voice quality, while the PC2Phone as well as Phone2PC are called SkypeOut and SkypeIn services respectively and they cost some money, however it is still cheaper than ordinary phone calls. One more nice feature in Skype is that both voice and instant messaging traffic is encrypts which gives you some privacy especially if the are some sniffers on your LAN or upstream m ISP. You can download it from their website

Egyptian Graffiti Art

It is very common here in Egypt to find people writing their own names or even doing random scratches on the buildings, bathroom walls, metro seats, school desks, etc. Lately it another phenomenon has started by putting some advertisement stickers or ones with phrases asking people to pray or girls to be veiled. Another foolish act has been noticed lately, are some people having spry and making black lines on faces in the street ads. The problem with these stuff that it makes our cities look ugly and unclean. I also think that religiously no one has the right to write or put a sticker on some public or privet property he - or she - doesn't own, independent on what is in that writing or sticker. Graffiti art is popular in many other places, but there it is some kind of art and people make some effort in drawing and painting it. Ok, I am not saying that this is right, but what I mean is that people must have some sense of beauty as well. In some countries they have some places where people are free to paint on the walls there as they want, but it is forbidden to do it anywhere else. Finally, I am not against graffiti art as it sometimes looks cool, but the government has to make some places for people to draw whatever they want, they may also draw in their own properties and they must have some sense of beauty as well.

IM Arabic

People face problems sometimes in writing arabic or their PC for various reasons such as they are sometimes not arabic enabled, or even their keyboards do not have arabic letters on them. So people started to use latin letters combined with numbers in order to represent the arabic letters. This is an article I have created in Wikipedia in order to standerdize what is known as IM Arabic as it was originally usd in Instant Messeging and Chatting programs. Please feel free to contribute to this article there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IM_Arabic

The Israeli Model

When The State of Israel was established in the late forties, they claimed that Palestine is the land of their ancestors bzillions of years ago and it is their right to go and have a Jewish state there. So lets try applying this model on the different races and groups in the whole world and see what will happen.

• Black people in Europe and America are originally from Africa, so it is their right to go back to their homeland and kick the people of these countries out.
• A big percentage of the Americans and Australians are originally from European countries, so it is their right to search for their original countries and go there and kick the people of these countries out.
• Many Americans are originally from Asia (China, India, etc...), and it is their right to go back to China and India and kick the Chinese and Indians out of their countries.

You may also try to follow the different races in your country and find more example to be added to these ones stated here.

Tihs raelly wroks !!

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe Tihs raelly wroks. Bset Regadrs

If you're not listening, tell me to turn off the radio

I've noticed lately that there are many Egyptians who have their own bloggers. It looks like some kind of hype or "hey people, I am here !!". These blogs can be categorized as follows:

A huge number of them are political ones and they talk mainly - may be only - about "kefaya" movement and the re-election of Mubarak, etc.

Another major part is what I call "Egyptian Popular Art" blogs which publish poems for "Salah Jaheen", "Ahmad Fouad Nejm", etc and talk about concerts in the "Sawi Cultural Wheel".

After that there are the personal ones where people write their thoughts and may be their daily life.

Finally there are religious ones.

There are some points that I've noticed in this, one of them is that the religious blogs are very few compared to the presence of the religion in the daily talk of people in the streets. Also there are no - or at least very few - technical - ones that talk about new technologies, open source projects, etc. - nor scientific blogs as far as I know, which is expected but very disappointing.

At last, the question now compared to the number of these blogs and their owners, how many one reads them and is this number significant or it is like the Arabic pop singers phenomenon where singers are much more than their listeners.

Gnireenigne

Is the reverse engineering - informaally: gnireenigne - by itself legal or illegal. I know that stealing someones code or algorith and using it in a product of your own especially if this piece of code is copyrighted is illegal. But the question is if I just reversed engineered this code, may be to find some vulnerability in it or to test some freaks disassebler I've written or any other reason, will this be illegal too or not.

Wiki Wiki Wawa

According to Wikipedia a wiki is "a web application that allows users to add content, as on an Internet forum, but also allows anyone to edit the content. The term Wiki also refers to the collaborative software used to create such a website (see Wiki software)." This new technology has been used lately in order to make what's known as Wikipedia (A Free Online Encyclopedia). The concept is to let people cooperate in writing the encyclopedia contents by themselve, they can also correct others mistakes, or add more details to what is already written. "Wikipedia's editing process assumes that exposing an article to many users will result in accuracy. Referencing Linus's law - Linus Trovalds - of open-source development, Sanger stated earlier: Given enough eyeballs, all errors are shallow. But the question is whether something is more likely to be true coming from a source whose resume sounds authoritative or a source that has been viewed by hundreds of thousands of people (with the ability to comment) and has survived". The German computing magazine c't performed a comparison of Brockhaus Premium, Microsoft Encarta, and Wikipedia in October 2004: . Experts evaluated 66 articles in various fields. In overall score, Wikipedia was rated 3.6 out of 5 points (B-), Brockhaus Premium 3.3, and Microsoft Encarta 3.1. In an analysis of online encyclopedias, Indiana University professors Emigh and Herring wrote that "Wikipedia improves on traditional information sources, especially for the content areas in which it is strong, such as technology and current events". Any ways, here is a link to Wikipedia site try surfing there and add whatever information you see that it is missing there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/