Rather than moderating, I'd rather write what I know.

There is a lot of misinformation here, and mainstream media coverage in the USA seems not up to par. Europe's coverage is much better, and Canada somewhere in between. The church bombing on New Year's Eve got more coverage than this history in the making period.

First, I am Egyptian, born and raised there, but living outside of Egypt for the last 2 decades. I was personally affected by the regime there for decades, but that is a story for a future blog post. I have family there, and was in Egypt for all of December 2010.

The whole region is run by military dictators, after the post-World War II upheaval. The colonial rule by European powers, or local monarchies, were ousted in military coupe d'etats. Many of the dictators were idealistic at first, and took a socialist or communist slant initially, only to become totalitarian despots, fascists, or something else other than socialist. Now the trend is to make it a dynastic rule, with Syria the first to have a nominal republic convert into a dynastic one. Tunisia's ex-despot had a son in law (Sakher El-Materi, only 30 years old) who was into politics big time and poised to take over the reigns of the country. In Algiers, the president is set to install his brother to succeed him. In Libya, a son seems earmarked for that. In Egypt it is also a son as well. I think Yemen.

Look at the statistics and cringe in horror at how long these despots are in power:

- Libya: Qaddafi - 41 years.
- Yemen: Saleh - 32 years.
- Egypt: Mubarak - 29 years.
- Tunisia: Ben Ali - 23 years.

Let us ignore the monarchies in the region for a bit, since they are not a republic and can nominally remain in power for that long.

Mubarak has been in power FOR MORE THAN ANY EGYPTIAN RULER IN MODERN HISTORY. That is since 1847 or so, NO ONE has ruled as long as Mubarak did.

All of them have had a sham parliament amend the nominal constitution to make it possible for them to run for more than the maximum of 2 or 3 terms, and then make it a lifetime thing as well.

All of them have parliaments that consist exclusively of those from the ruling party which gets 90% or more of seats via intimidation and exclusion of the opposition.

Now, the Operation Egypt thing is relatively new. I saw it today in the morning only. So it remains to be seen if they are helpful or not.

What I can say is that on Jan 25, the Egyptian Presidency web site was showing "under development and construction". I was checking it for a page for the list of modern rulers of Egypt and their time in power. Today, the web site seems to be under a DoS attack.

However, the stars of the show are first Kolena Khaled Saeed (We are all Khaled Saeed). It is a Facebook group that is named after a 20-something youth tortured and killed by the police last year. Police brutality is one of the top demands of those who are protesting. Last I checked, they had 413,000 "likes".

The second star is the Rassd News Network. This is a grassroots citizen news organization that is very mature, professional and objective. They verify sources and rate items as either "unconfirmed" or "confirmed". They have both Arabic and English updates from various sources, including eyewitnesses from action. You can "Like" them in Facebook, ignore the Arabic messages, and read the English ones to see updates.

The path to where we are today with protests was a long one.

The parliamentary and presidential elections in 2005 and 2006 show a lot of courage from a very small number of people. They were mainly middle class or intellectuals. The rest of the public did not catch on. Those who opposed the president got the heavy hand of the regime on them. For example, Saad El Din Ibrahim (an academic, and a bit eccentric) got imprisoned on false charges, Ayman Nour (another opposition figure) was imprisoned for other false charges and only freed when Obama came to power.

The Muslim Brotherhood, who have wide support specially in poorer classes, have been systematically excluded and intimidated from politics. The regime rounds them up before elections, and keeps them behind bars and then frees them after the elections are over.

Smaller political parties were allowed to operate since they have very little following and hence not a threat on the regime (Communists, Nasserists, Ancient Egyptianists, Wafd, ...etc.)

In the 2005 parliament the Muslim Brotherhood were allowed some seats, to show the West that Egypt is democratic. In 2010, it was the Wafd party who was selected by the ruling party to be the token opposition, and the brotherhood got no seats.

Elections are not free at all, and have never been so since 60 years. From intimidation, exclusion of candidates, ballot stuffing, ...etc you name it. They use all the tricks in every book.

The current president plans on running for yet another term (after completing 30 years in power) in October 2011. This was to be the next big time for protests, but what happened in Tunisia no doubt accelerated things. People suddenly saw that a dictator is not permanent and can be deposed by just the people asking for what is theirs. That is why January 25 happened. Again, it is grassroots, with no centralized leadership. Think crowd-sourcing. Thing open source. This is it in real life.

The grievances are many: no jobs to earn a decent living. No chance to get a place to live in for a youth. Hence no way to get married. Corruption in the form of bribes, nepotism and others. The ruling elite and their cronies living lavish lives, having cars that cost a million Egyptian pounds, and residence that cost many millions. Amounts that a regular Egyptian would never see in many life times. Political standstill: no way to get rid peacefully of the current president, the ruling party, the ruling elite. Police brutality (around 26 people died in police custody in recent years). The security forces are there to protect the regime, not serve the public. Prices going up on basic food stuff, and with salaries staying the same, people are suffering.

Now to the protests themselves:

No centralized leadership: this is not the Muslim Brotherhood, or El Baradei (ex-Internationl Atomic Energy Agency president and Nobel Peace Prize winner). This is true grassroots when you see it in action. People coordinating via Twitter and Facebook. No one giving marching orders.

Regular people: people from all walks of life are there. Rich actors, poor youth, lawyers, journalists, movie director, women, girls, ...etc. This is not exclusively for religious or poor people. It is everyone.

Different people: see above.

Fear barrier has been broken: Egyptians finally got over the fear they have been living with for 60 years, and starting to confront the regime. My father was afraid. I was afraid. The new generation

New media: in the 1960s to 1980s, the government could control the media, because it was all state owned, or they can ban it (newspapers). Starting in the 90s, things changed. There was satellite TV that broke borders, and the internet of course. Today, there are ways for people to communicate that the government can't control (completely at least).

Now today, Blackberry BBM (secure instant messaging) was down for a few hours today, on all three mobile network. Then it was restored.

Facebook stopped working mid-day too. Twitter was down on the first day of protests (Jan 25).

Tomorrow is set to be a big day with people heading to the streets after the Friday mid day prayer (Friday is the weekend there). The United Copts site has urged Christians to join in, so this is again an Egyptian thing, not Muslims only or whatever.

Here is another grassroots effort to document this historic event: 2011 Egyptian protests on Wikipedia.

If you want more, join that Facebook group above. Or email me at my username here at Google's thing.
Things are happening too fast, but I will try my best.

Update: Just got a message a few minutes ago that land line internet is effectively down. Mass arrests on the Muslim Brotherhood Egypt-wide.

Now, mod this up if you like it, so others would know ...

A university professor who is the ex-advisor for the Canadian Prime Minister also advocated the assassination of Julian Assange. He later "regretted" the remark.

Do not think of bees as just for honey.

They are crucial for many commercial crops to produce anything substantial, by pollination.

There was a program on TV recently (PBS Nova, or The Nature of Things on CBC), and the numbers are staggering. Those who practice apiculture have been transporting hives near flowering trees and being paid by orchard owners so they get a proper crop. If they don't get the bees to do it, the crop yields fall by orders of magnitude.

And that is the commercial part. The natural part can be equally important for wild plants, and all the other creatures in the ecosystem that depend on their seeds and fruits.

How about a Drupal site that can do 2.8 million page views per day? And actually the figures have been higher since with a peak of 3.4 million per day, and 92 million per month. And all that is on a single medium box.

And for the rest of the drivel in that link, how about sites like The White House using it?

As I commented previously, this is all about catching terrorists, and nothing to do with censorship. Seems a lot of people did not like that comment. Now that even corporate VPNs are included, what can the conclusion be?

Check the facts please ...

Saudi Arabia has its share of terror incidents. For example, the Riyadh Compound bombing, and many more incidents, and more. Just a year ago, the Saudi official and member of the royal family was injured in a terror attack. The terrorist had the bomb in his rectum, and activated it via a mobile phone. Source here.

Dubai being an international hub of trade and commerce, is always facing threats of criminals and spies operating on its soil. Examples are the murder of Suzanne Tamim, plotted by an Egyptian millionaire, and assassination of Mahmound Al Mabhouh conducted by Israel.

I under no illusion that India, Saudi Arabia, UAE and whomever else, will snoop on Blackberry and whatever else they can get their hands on, be it for legitimate reasons, or for keeping an eye on their own citizens.

The bad part is how it is reported differently in the media (censorship vs. terrorism) for the same act (asking for backdoors to a certain technology). That is where the spin is ...

Oh, I get it now ...

If it is Saudi Arabia and the UAE, it is all about censorship ...

But if it is India, it is a move against the terrorists ...

It is all about spin ...

I find it ironic that Redhat are the ones complaining about Ubuntu, while it was Redhat who exited the desktop market years ago, focusing on the server side of things. This void that was created was filled by Ubuntu, and it has become successful. Fedora is not quite the same, since it is bleeding edge, with not stable releases.

Ubuntu's success is well deserved. They fill a much needed part in the Linux arena.

Counting patches from before Canonical existed is inaccurate and biased. And patches are not the only measure. There is packages, polish, community building and marketing.

We all know what Scandinavian countries have in terms of broadband.

Yes, we are jealous :-)

But such is life ...

I am a Rogers customer. I like the speed and latency (Express plan), but hate the bandwidth cap. Normally, I don't go over it, but occasionally do so.

Here is a matrix of their plans.

Two plans changed for new clients signing up after July 21: Lite and Extreme. Lite is what the summary describes. Extreme was 95GB for $60 a month, now it is 80GB.

They want to make money in two ways: via their own video service, and by charging extra for bandwidth that people will use for Netflix.

Ack!

Correct link here.

The coordinates are: 4328N 8031W

They have revised it down to 5.0 per the USGS.

I did feel it. Was on a recliner sofa working on my laptop, and felt the sofa rock back and forth. Did not think it was a quake at the time. See
http://baheyeldin.com/places/canada/earthquake-2010-june-23-1341-quebecontario.html">here.

I confused, since I am on Kubuntu 10.04 64-bit version, and use the Firefox version that comes with that release (3.6.3).

For the longest time, I am able to kill npviewer.bin without Firefox crashing. I just get a grey box when I do that where Flash used to be.

Flash already runs as a separate process for me.

Here are the processes:

me 4177 1746 0 12:43 ? 00:00:00 /bin/sh /usr/lib/firefox-3.6.3/firefox
me 4182 4177 0 12:43 ? 00:00:00 /bin/sh /usr/lib/firefox-3.6.3/run-mozilla.sh /usr/lib/firefox-3.6.3/firefox-bin
me 4186 4182 9 12:43 ? 01:03:08 /usr/lib/firefox-3.6.3/firefox-bin
me 4353 4186 2 12:45 ? 00:16:37 /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper/i386/linux/npviewer.bin --plugin /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so --connection /org/wrapper/NSPlugins/libflashplayer.so/4186-1

So, what is happening here?

This bill is good intentioned, but practically useless, given the state of affairs of the cell phone market reality in North America (yes, USians, you too!)

In Europe, Africa and most of Asia, everyone standardized on GSM. You ask the network for a phone number, and they give you a SIM card, you go to any shop and buy any phone and it is guaranteed to work with any network you choose. Not only that, but phones work everywhere from Hong Kong to Dubai to Spain to Johannesburg. Nothing special, other than getting a SIM card if roaming is too expensive.

In the USA and Canada, we the consumers, have accepted things that are never acceptable elsewhere. For example, we had CDMA, which is used only in the USA, Canada, Japan and perhaps another one or two smaller countries. CDMA does not have a SIM card. The phone is made by the manufacturer and locked to a certain network that sells you the phone.

Even when GSM came to North America, it was done in bands that were not the standard ones used elsewhere in the world, which was circumvented when quad band phones were put on the market. Meaning they work in Europe and Canada/USA, but they have a higher price and have more silicon inside to handle this fragmentation.

When 3G came by, more fragmentation occurred. The governments started selling "spectrum", and companies like Google and Cricket grabbed certain bands (WINDMobile, Mobilicity and Public Mobile in Canada did the same). AWS was invented.

This means that a phone from Rogers will not work with WINDMobile and vice versa.

So what use will the bill be if they are operating at different frequencies?

Not only that, we see industry lobbyists asking for "more spectrum". The excuse is that spectrum is too crowded, but the real reason is more fragmentation and balkanization so they can lock in customers more and more. Why does Europe which is more densely populated, or Egypt have more carriers, yet all handsets work on all networks?

See this article I wrote earlier: Mobile phone carriers lobby for more balkanization by asking for more spectrum as well.