“And the beast shall be made legion. Its numbers shall be increased a thousand thousand fold. The din of a million keyboards like unto a great storm shall cover the earth, and the followers of Mammon shall tremble.”
-from The Book of Mozilla, 3:31

Firefox download day (18th June) was a huge success all over the world. up till about 10 PM Jordan Local Time, a record breaking 8,490,451 copies of Firefox 3 were download worldwide in a single day.

Naturally the U.S lead the pack with around 2,617,307 downloads, followed by Germany with 703,813 downloads, Spain: 304,225 downloads, U.K: 303,236, France: 297,022, and Iran with 260,415 downloads. (Imagine that, Iran at number 6 worldwide, who would’ve known).

The numbers across the Arab world however, were not too encouraging, the most downloads in the Arab world were in Saudi Arabia with 8,326 downloads, followed by the U.A.E with 6,890 downloads, Egypt: 6,001 downloads, Morocco: 4,707 downloads, Algeria: 3,345 downloads, Tunisia: 3,903 downloads, Kuwait: 2,226 downloads, Qatar: 1,509 downloads and Jordan with 1,469. The rest of the Arab countries’ numbers are too trivial to mention.

Now, if we add up the numbers for the top Arab countries mentioned above, they sum up to 38,375 downloads, which frankly is quite disappointing, considering the fact that Israel alone scored about 33,250 downloads. and if you take into account the number of internet users in the Arab world combined compared to Israel… well, you do the math. And to add insult to injury, lets not forget Iran, the country with the 6th most downloads worldwide. we Arabs are way behind, or so it seems.

I am not sure really what to make of this, I imagined there’d be more Firefox supporters in the Arab world, especially in Jordan, but apparently, there aren’t. which is quite sad if you think about it, because if this tells us something, its that the overwhelming majority of Internet users in Jordan, and indeed the Arab world, just don’t care! dare I say even “tech un-aware”.

And I’ll tell you why…

According to This report there are 796,900 Internet users in Jordan as of September 07. Now, to have only 1,360 out of 796,900 care enough to download Firefox is just pathetic. Now, I know that more people will probably download Firefox in the upcoming days, and surely the number of Firefox users in the Jordan in particular and the Arab region in general is much larger, but still this gives us an indication, and something to ponder upon.

- As mentioned, The Numbers above were taken at 10 PM Local Jordan Time, which marks the end time for the download day. statistics from this page. Numbers now have changed and differed and are much higher but will not count for inclusion in the Guinness book of world records.

On a side note: I did download Firefox 3, But I’m not gonna use it yet, I’m sticking with FF 2 for now, since the majority of my favourite FF plugins (and indeed most FF plugins) are not yet FF 3 compatible.

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Having said that, The onion movie revolves primarily around stereotyping through a string of satirical skits and fake news that involve Blacks, Whites, Arabs, Pop musicians, Steven Segal and other things that I cannot mention here. in a typical good old classic onion style, this movie delivers it all seamlessly and beautifully. and even though this movie isn’t likely to win any Oscars, it will most definitely make you laugh your ass off.

Synopsis: When the Onion News Network asks lead anchorman Norm Archer to compromise his journalistic. The Onion, that gold standard of pitch-perfect news parody publications–brings its distinctly absurd-yet-relevant brand of satire to a hitherto untapped medium: the feature film! When the Onion News Network asks lead anchorman Norm Archer to compromise his journalistic integrity in the name of pleasing a new corporate sponsor, Archer doesn’t respond too kindly. Armed with an irreverent sketch comedy-style approach to a loose narrative, The Onion Movie takes aim at everything politics and society have to offer.

So even though there isn’t really much of a plot, the movie does not fail to keep you entertained throughout the whole movie. that is of course if you are not that type of person that could get easily offended. for its biting satire can get a bit harsh, i personally found it to be hard hitting and straight to the point, in a cleverly woven hilarious way.

It is a shame The Onion Movie went straight to DVD and wasn’t released in theaters, it is definitely one of the funniest movies in the past couple of years, and deserves more exposure.

Trailer: (Rated R.. Kind Of)

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I don’t care what anybody says, this can’t be good.
And if you doubt the authenticity of this video, just search youtube for “cell phone popcorn” you’ll find tons of ‘em.

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Instead of steel, aluminum or even carbon fiber, the GINA Light Visionary Model has a body of seamless fabric stretched over a movable metal frame that allows the driver to change its shape at will. The car — which actually runs and drives — is a styling design headed straight for the BMW Museum in Munich and so it will never see production, but building a practical car wasn’t the point.

Not too practical, still, very neat :)

[source|read more]

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“Putin is the President of Germany”?

“Deliver bottled hot water to dehydrated babies”?

Apparently, McCain also still doesn’t exactly know how to use a teleprompter, or even read from a sheet of paper for that matter:

And of course, McCain is the master of contradicting himself:

God help us all when this guy gets elected, and he will, sadly.

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You may have noticed that Google has a new favicon, the small icon you see in your browser next to the URL or in your bookmarks list. Some people have wondered why we changed our favicon — after all, we hadn’t in 8.5 years(!). The reason is that we wanted to develop a set of icons that would scale better to some new platforms like the iPhone and other mobile devices. So the new favicon is one of those, but we’ve also developed a group of logo-based icons that all hang together as a unified set. Here’s the full set:

The design process we went through was rigorous and interesting, so we thought we would share more of it here. We tried in total more than 300 permutations. It was much harder than we thought at first. We wanted something distinctive and noticeable, so we aimed toward transparency or semi-transparency, so the image would have a more distinctive noticeable shape than just a block. We wanted something that embraced the colorfulness of the logo, yet wouldn’t date itself. Since we don’t really have a symbol that means Google, we felt it best to work with the logo and letters within it. Our design team tried literally hundreds of approaches. You can see some of our explorations here.

By no means is the one you’re seeing our favicon final; it was a first step to a more
unified set of icons. However, we really value feedback from users and want to hear your ideas that we may have missed. If you have your own notions about the Google favicon, please send them to us. We’ll do our best to work them in, and maybe your idea will be the one that people see billions of times per day.

[source:google blog]

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This documentary (Aired April 2007) was created as a result of the controversy created by Mearsheimer and Walt’s “The Israel Lobby” article. Featuring interviews with Mearsheimer, geostrategist Lawrence Wikerson, Richard Perle, historian and critic Tony Judt, John Hagee, former Congressman Earl Hilliard, Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch, Michael Massing and Daniel Levy.

‘Tegenlicht’ (’Backlight’) is a program from the Dutch VPRO public television. English elucidation at the VPRO website. Listen also to the revealing 2002 BBC radio reportage ‘A lobby to deal with‘.

- Another related video: Republican Senator Paul Findley Speaks Out to expose the AIPAC:

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“The threats to Israel’s security are large and growing, and America’s commitment must grow as well. I strongly support the increase in military aid to Israel, scheduled to begin in October. I am committed to making certain Israel maintains its qualitative military edge. Israel’s enemies are too numerous, its margin of error too small, and our shared interests and values too great for us to follow any other policy.”

“The people of Israel reserve a special respect for courage, because so much courage has been required of them. In the record of history, sheer survival in the face of Israel’s many trials would have been impressive enough. But Israel has achieved much more than that these past sixty years. Israel has endured, and thrived, and her people have built a nation that is an inspiration to free nations everywhere.”

“The State of Israel stands as a singular achievement in many ways, and not the least is its achievement as the great democracy of the Middle East. If there are ties between America and Israel that critics of our alliance have never understood, perhaps that is because they do not fully understand the love of liberty and the pursuit of justice. But they should know those ties cannot be broken. We were brought together by shared ideals and by shared adversity. We have been comrades in struggle, and trusted partners in the quest for peace. We are the most natural of allies. And, like Israel itself, that alliance is forever.”

[source]

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