The Daily Qassooms

2010-01-01T19:56:00.001+03:00

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

Japan Pushes Forward on Plans for a Giant Solar Power Farm in Space

2009-11-10T10:49:00.002+03:00

Japan Pushes Forward on Plans for a Giant Solar Power Farm in Space

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Nov. 5, 1955: A Flux of Genius

2009-11-05T14:48:00.003+03:00

And I thought Back to the Future was all fiction!!!!!!!

Nov. 5, 1955: A Flux of Genius

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Nov. 5, 1955: A Flux of Genius

By Daniel Dumas and Jon Snyder
November 4, 2009 |
8:00 pm |
Categories: 20th century, Culture

1955: A clock, a slippery toilet seat and a severe concussion lead to the invention of time travel.

Dr. Emmet Lathrop Brown is known for being a member (unverified) of the Manhattan Project, a physics professor at Hill Valley University, and a talented entrepreneur and handyman. But it’s his contribution to the field of temporal physics for which he is best remembered.

According to archival footage, Brown was standing on his toilet seat on the evening of Nov. 5, 1955, attempting to hang a clock in his bathroom, when he slipped and slammed his head on the side of the sink. Upon regaining consciousness Brown reported having “a revelation, a picture, a picture in my head.” A picture which he crudely scrawled down on a piece of paper and subsequently spent 30 years of his life and family fortune to build.

That picture, of course, was the flux capacitor. And as every high school physics student knows, it’s the device that makes time travel possible.

The main hurdle Brown faced with the flux capacitor was delivering enough power to make it function. The capacitor required a staggering 1.21 gigawatts of electricity to generate a time-displacement field. Brown first surmised that meeting the capacitor’s power needs could be accomplished in two ways: either by channeling a nuclear reaction or harnessing a bolt of lightning. Lightning as it turned out, was pretty much out of the question, because it’s impossible to determine when and where a bolt will strike.

Brown decided to go for the nuclear option. He hypothesized that within 30 years, material like plutonium would be easily obtainable — probably available in corner drugstores. It turned out he was dead wrong.

By 1985 Brown had squandered his family fortune and allegedly committed several acts of insurance fraud to finance his time machine. Built from a Delorean DMC-12 (whose stainless steel body had a direct and influential effect on flux dispersal), it was fitted with a working flux capacitor that was powered by a nuclear reactor. Desparate for fuel, Brown duped a group of Libyan terrorists into providing him with weapons-grade plutonium.

At 1:21 a.m Oct. 25, 1985, Brown (with the help of his protege, Martin McFly) was able to successfully — and safely — send his dog and then McFly backwards in time. After a series of setbacks resulting from the first temporal displacement, Brown and McFly would travel to the years 1955, 2015 and 1885.

Unfortunately, because of a railroad accident near Hill Valley’s Eastwood Ravine a day later, Brown’s DeLorean along with its flux capacitor was destroyed. Despite repeated requests from the media and scientific communities, Brown has declined interviews and refuses to share or replicate the flux capacitor’s technology.

The incidents leading up to the time machine demise also served as the basis for the award-winning documentary, Back to the Future.

Source: Fictional

Photo: Ernest O. Lawrence, Emmet L. Brown, and J. Robert Oppenheimer in early 1946 at the controls to the magnet of the 184-inch cyclotron, which was being converted from its wartime use to its original purpose as a cyclotron. Jon Snyder/Wired.com

(Noticed how close they look alike, the guy in the movie & the guy in that ancient picture?)

Cheers! :-)

THE POWER OF LINUX

2009-10-03T18:30:00.000+03:00

Beautiful...!

2009-09-26T11:29:00.001+03:00

Enjoy! :-)

Tomatoes of Google!

2009-07-21T09:06:00.003+03:00

From Engadget.com:

"WHERE ARE THE TOMATOES?"

"THEY HAVEN'T ARRIVED FROM LEBANON YET...!"

I knew what country was that ;-)

Cheers! :-D

How Google is working on its new OS

2009-07-18T13:16:00.001+03:00

Just like that!

Cheers ;-)

25 Years of Tetris: From Russia With Fun!

2009-06-06T21:48:00.000+03:00

Sputnik burned up in the atmosphere, Berlin is now one city, but 25 years later, the Soviet-designed Tetris remains one of the most popular and ubiquitous video games ever created. It has sold over 125 million copies, been released for nearly every video-game platform of the past two decades and even been played on the side of a skyscraper. Yet creator Alexey Pajitnov almost never saw a ruble for his creation.

(Read the rest in the link ;-) )

25 Years of Tetris: From Russia With Fun!

What if Google was "there" 130 years ago?

2009-05-31T14:38:00.002+03:00

:-D

Cheers! ;-)

Contacted by a Publishing Press in Hong Kong!

2009-05-13T09:46:00.003+03:00

I got this e-mail in my Flickr account:

Dear Sir,

We are one of the major educational book publishers in Hong Kong specialised in the publication of textbooks on various subjects across the spectrum of the Hong Kong secondary school curriculum.

We plan to publish 4 textbooks for the local secondary school students and teachers namely:
1. Liberal Studies in Life (Senior Forms)-----Module 6 Issue Explorer (English Edition)--Student's Book
2. Liberal Studies in Life (Senior Forms)-----Module 6 Issue Explorer (Chinese Edition)--Student's Book
3. Liberal Studies in Life (Senior Forms)-----Module 6 Issue Explorer (English Edition)--Teacher's Guide
4. Liberal Studies in Life (Senior Forms)-----Module 6 Issue Explorer (Chinese Edition)--Teacher's Guide

We would be grateful if you could grant us permission to reproduce the following high resolution photo as teaching material in the books. Acknowledgement will be given to you in due course. Please kindly inform us the photo credit line and we will include them in the books to point out the photo source accordingly.

Description of the photo: Sunway Lagoon in Malaysia

The high resolution photo can be downloaded online from the link upon receipt of your approval:
www.flickr.com/photos/qassoom/347048057/

As the books are going to be published soon, your earliest attention to this matter is much appreciated.

Yours sincerely,

Lo Cheuk King
Photo Permission Editor
Educational Publishing Division
Times Publishing (Hong Kong) Ltd
(Unit B2, 6/F, Eastern Sea Industrial Building
48-56 Tai Lin Pai Road, Kwai Chung
New Territories, Hong Kong)
(tel: 852-29457276)

& this was the photo:

WOW! NEVER THOUGHT ONE OF MY PHOTOS WOULD MAKE IT OUT OF MY CYBERSPACE ACCOUNTS! :-D

Worry not, I told them to include my name in the credit, plus I would see if it is going to be used for commercial purpose, where I would ask them for a financial compensation! :-D

Way to go! :-D

Cheers ;-)

Putting a Price on Social Connections

2009-04-11T16:01:00.001+03:00

From
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2009/tc2009047_031301.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily

Putting a Price on Social Connections

Researchers at IBM and MIT have found that certain e-mail connections and patterns at work correlate with higher revenue production

By Stephen Baker

(Editor's note: This is the first in a series, Value of Virtual Friends, exploring the ways our lives are affected—financially and otherwise—by the multiplicity of online social and professional contacts.)

Messaging with the boss much? Maybe you ought to be. Workers who have strong communication ties with their managers tend to bring in more money than those who steer clear of the boss, according to a new analysis of social networks in the workplace by IBM (IBM) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The research, released this week, even assigns a dollar value to e-mail interaction with an employee's managers. Among the group studied, several thousand consultants at IBM, those with strong links to a manager produced an average of $588 of revenue per month over the norm.

The results represent an early attempt to understand the value of the broadening variety of personal connections afforded by the Web. Users of social media rack up LinkedIn contacts, Facebook friends, and Twitter followers by the hundreds, if not thousands. But figuring out how big a difference all those contacts make in a person's life, financial or otherwise, is a far murkier matter.

That's why leading tech companies, including IBM, Microsoft (MSFT), and Yahoo! (YHOO), are hiring economists, anthropologists, and other social scientists to map and classify new types of friendships—and put a value on them.

Researchers at IBM Research and MIT's Sloan School of Management found that the average e-mail contact was worth $948 in revenue. To unearth that and other data, they used mathematical formulas to analyze the e-mail traffic, address books, and buddy lists of 2,600 IBM consultants over the course of a year. (Their identities were shielded from researchers, who viewed them only as encrypted numbers, known as hash codes.) They compared the communication patterns with performance, as measured by billable hours.

Too Many Cooks?

To be sure, not all networking yields dividends. The IBM-MIT study found that consultants with weak ties to a number of managers produced $98 per month less than average. Why? Those employees may move more slowly as they process "conflicting demands from different managers," the study's authors write. They suffer from "too many cooks in the kitchen."

Findings like that may not be news to management consultants. But now, with the explosion of social media in the workplace, researchers have a chance to study office communication as never before. As they do, of course, workers can be expected to game the systems devised by researchers. This might mean taking steps to create strong links to managers—or efface signs of costly weak ties to higher-ups.

For IBM, research into the networked behavior of its employees promises insights about teamwork, innovation, and the transmission of knowledge and ideas within the company. This is especially important for global companies—say, where experts in New York might be unaware that colleagues in Singapore are untangling a similar problem. IBM researchers fine-tuned management of industrial supply chains a half-century ago; now their challenge is promoting the flow of knowledge throughout the workforce.

A key laboratory for this research is the company's internal social network, Beehive. The 55,000 employees who choose to use it exchange everything from family photos to the algorithms they use to resolve complicated work-related problems.

In another study to be released this week, an IBM team at the company's Cambridge (Mass.) labs analyzes methods to introduce employees to colleagues they haven't yet met. The idea, says researcher Werner Geyer, is to create new connections within the global workforce and to encourage employees to share knowledge. "We want to incent people to participate," Geyer says. He notes that participation in the network has doubled in the past year.

Matchmaking Allies

One key is to alert people to potential friends and allies at the company. Much the way companies like Netflix (NFLX) and Amazon (AMZN) study past Web-surfing patterns to recommend books and movies, Geyer and his team are digging for signs of shared interests and behaviors among their colleagues.

In their matchmaking efforts, the IBM team tried a variety of approaches. One used a tool favored by Facebook, recommending friends of common friends. Others analyzed the subjects and themes of employees' postings on Beehive, words they use, and patents they've filed. As expected, some of the systems lined up workers with colleagues they already knew. Others were better at unearthing unknowns. But fewer of them turned out to be good matches. To the frustration of the researchers, some of the workers noted that recommendations looked good, yet they didn't bother contacting the people. "They put them aside for future reference," Geyer says.

The research, he concedes, is at an early stage. But as the economy struggles, more companies are sure to study the company we keep—and even attempt to calculate how much each friendship is worth.

Baker is a senior writer for BusinessWeek in New York.

ONE HELL OF A DEVICE!

2009-04-01T19:44:00.000+03:00

ENJOY PEOPLE! :-D

Did You know????

2009-03-09T13:27:00.002+03:00

Enjoy! :-D

And oh... What does that mean to us, Arab-world residents?

That we will be in deep darkness after 4 years!!

a 1.57 GIGA Pixel Camera picture!

2009-02-25T16:06:00.001+03:00

http://gigapan.org/viewGigapanFullscreen.php?auth=033ef14483ee899496648c2b4b06233c

Check... It... Out!

Imagine what you can do with such camera! :-D

Cheeeeeeeeeers! :-D

Maged down below, Me up there!

2009-02-23T00:01:00.001+03:00

Maged down below, Me up there!
Originally uploaded by Qassaam

Some of the greatest dudes I ever met ;-)

Cheers to all of them! Each & ever member / employee in 2Connect ;-)

Thanks for making the day-out so great, :-)

And another big thanks to whom participated in organizing such day! :-)

Love ya all! :-D

THAT was funny!

2009-02-02T16:34:00.002+03:00

Look what I got in my e-mail! :-D

Houston, February 2^nd, 2009

QASIM A.RASOOL - THE DAILY QASSOOMS

Attention,

General Manager

It is our pleasure to congratulate you for obtaining the most prestigious Business Award in the world, “THE BIZZ AWARDS 2008.” This honor will be given to your company, for being one of the best companies from your country.

This award not only acknowledges business excellence but also distinguishes the magnificent leadership from successful businesses leaders like you.

This luxurious ceremony will be held on April 1^st, 2009 at 8:00pm in the only seven stars hotel in the world, the BURJ AL ARAB located in the city of Dubai. The event will take place during a glamorous gala dinner that we would prepare for you -only like you, as world leaders, deserve.

It is important to inform you that as a winner, you will be eligible for unique benefits: presentation of awards to your company and its directors (trophy, medals and certificates) in an unforgettable ceremony; publicity (national and international press campaign as well as inclusion in the book of memories); and the best tools for new business opportunities (WORLDCOB Business network, Business Conventions and events).

Our organization is a worldwide leading business association accredited internationally by the Better Business Bureau (BBB), which certifies the integrity and trustworthiness of American companies. In addition, we have as sponsors the most important chambers of commerce in the world. Finally, our best endorsements come from the members of our Confederation which are all top businesses in the world.

An important letter was sent by mail a few weeks ago congratulating you for your nomination. Attached to this letter was graphic material about the Confederation, however, to this date we have not yet received a response. For this reason, we are listing on this letter all the existing benefits. We currently offer an “early bird” special with a closing date of February 12^th,2009. For this reason we urge you to contact us as soon as possible.

I want to take this opportunity to encourage you to look at our introductory video which has some images from our 35 events worldwide. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlpAvPR4Nfw

If you have any questions don’t hesitate to contact me. I will be expecting your phone call at (713)339-9900 U.S. or your email jmoran@worldcob.org

As we share the happiness and joy of this achievement, I look forward to congratulating you in person.

Sincerely,

Jesus J. Moran
Chief Executive Officer

WORLD CONFEDERATION OF BUSINESSES

Address: 2825 Wilcrest, Suite 163 - Houston, TX 77042
Telephone: (713) 3399900, Fax: (713) 3399323 (USA)

www.worldcob.org

www.thebizzawards.com

BENEFITS

I. AWARD, MEDALS AND CERTIFICATES

1.1 The Bizz Awards 2009 trophy engraved with the winner’s name as the highest recognition granted by World Confederation of Businesses.

1.2 Admission for two people to the majestic gala dinner and award ceremony Bizz Awards 2009 to be held on April 1^st, 2009 at the BURJ AL ARAB in Dubai, with an attendance of over 600 guests.

1.3 Excellence in Business Leadership medals honoring the Directors of the winning company.

1.4 Excellence in Business Management medals recognizing the General Manager of the winning company.

1.5 Excellence in Quality Management medals recognizing the Quality Manager of the winning company

1.6 Excellence in Marketing Management medals recognizing the Marketing Manager of the winning company.

1.7 A certificate recognizing the company as a World Business Leader.

1.8 A certificate that recognizes the participant as an Honorary Partner of the World Confederation of Businesses.

1.9 A certificate recognizing the Chief Executive Officer of the organization as a World Leader Businessperson.

II MARKETING AND ADVERTISING

2.1 A 1/3 page ad in The Bizz Awards 2009 Memory Book which will include your business profile and a picture of your company representative receiving the award. This book is published and delivered at no charge, with a distribution of 50,000 copies through over 30 countries.

2.2 The rights to use of the award logo, trophy image, photographs, press notes and all of the advertising tools we make available for publicity and marketing in mass media: newspapers, magazines, radio and television.

2.3 Recognition through a press campaign arranged by the most distinguished public relation agencies in your country, thanks to the agreements between WORLDCOB with such agencies.

2.4 A 10 minute interview about your company’s history, achievements, and vision. This interview will be recorded and edited with those of other winners and will be distributed along with The Bizz Awards 2009 Memory Book

III MANAGEMENT AND CORPORATE RELATIONS

3.1 Admittance to the Business Convention EXPOBIZZ which includes Managerial Coaching Workshops, Business Matchmaking and the Business Showcase.

3.2 Membership to the WORLDCOB Business Network. This system can be accessed by a username and password that will be assigned to you as soon as you confirm your registration. Through this network you can contact other businesses and schedule a meeting at EXPOBIZZ.

Now... "The Daily Qassooms" is Bahrain's top firm that won International recognition and shall be honored in Dubai's Burj Al-Arab...

Wow! :-D :-D :-D

Cheers! :-D

My story with ZAIN – Part 1

2008-11-04T00:07:00.000+03:00

I have such a story with this so-called company Zain that goes back to 2005 – when it was known at that time with “mtc Vodafone” before the latest re-branding in 2007 that made it called what it is called.

Zain in Arabic means “good”. But my experience with them is far from zain and close to mo-zain (unfortunate) than any other phrase that can describe such thing.

In 2005 while I was taking my Bachelor’s in Mobile Phone Technology & Computing, our University decided to send some of its best – but mainly specialized in such field – to take an internship in mtc Vodafone to complete their B.Sc requirements, and it happened that I was one of 3 along with two other girls to get training there. I was the only “technical” personal in the time the one of the girls were placed in the Accounting Department & the other one in the Human Resources.

In the induction session the presenter was astonished by my specialization and told me immediately “that I will be taken after I graduate at once” due to their need, but informed him that I had 2 years to go until then. In the NOC (Network Operation Center) in MSC-02 (Mobile Switching Center 2) I spent 2 months side by side with the technical team that was “monitoring” all mobile activities in the Kingdom of mtc Vodafone with over 9 42” Plasma screens showing all alerts & warnings of any outage in any location with many other monitoring tools on the workers screens & machines. I was there along with another girl taking a B.Sc in BIS (Business Information Technology) & another in statistics.

The head of the NOC turned out to know my cousin – who at that time was a Marketing Office, known by many of the staff there – and recognize me through that, although I did not disclose to anyone my relation to any employee in mtc Vodafone. There was another lady who was Egyptian and was responsible for us – the trainees – and our assessment although none was reported back to our University by a certain person from the University itself according to a schedule set by Zain themselves but not implemented as well.

That Egyptian lady was kind of strict with me, but she wasn’t bad at all, but she got a girl in our little group recognized more than the rest because her sister was an executive secretary for one of the directors there. I remember her getting shocked when I went to say hi to my cousin in the very last day of the training in the cafeteria – in which was a Wednesday and at that time Wednesdays were the last days of the week before they were changed to Thursdays – where there was a big breakfast and had me asked… “Where did you know her from?!?!??!!!”… “She’s my cousin” with exclamation marks all over everyone else!

I remember during my traineeship period there when I was asked for my contacts by that Egyptian lady and I started mentioning a 3 then a 9 I heard her saying in whisper “traitor…”. Of course she was kidding as she was referring to my Batelco number and she said to me in a clear phrase “Boy, if you want to stay here get yourself a number from us!” surely that was all acceptable as that time the fierce competition between mtc Vodafone and Batelco lead to bone-breaking stages where mtc Vodafone was able to get a 30% market share after 2 years of establishment in Bahrain! My cousin later on helped me get a nice number from them & I am still using it as my primary phone number till this very day.

Anyways, that was my joyful 2005 experience, but the nice things simply stop here.
After completing my Bachelor’s subjects & having my final project as the only requirement left for me to get my full B.Sc in Mobile Phone Technology & Computing I decided to work for Ahlia University for all the good things they did for me for all these years, but surly working in the Admission & Registration Office was NOT my proposed career path as I decided to stay for a few month for help & spending time till I get myself a proper job in my field. Few days later I received a phone call – right after the rebranding to “Zain” & moving the HQ from Kuwait to Bahrain – from a girl working there telling me that there is an urgent vacant for a “NOC Technician” that I am eligible to apply for & that I should attend the interview for such position next day at 12 pm.

Unfortunately, I have already booked tickets, made reservations and confirmed with my family days & days before that – and struggled with management personals to get such vacation that I needed badly as I started working right after the graduation ceremony day – but she insisted that I must attend tomorrow’s interview or I won’t get the job. I told her if you called me some days before that I would arrange it, but now it’s almost impossible! I hanged up the phone to get another call from my cousin who insisted that I should cancel my trip tomorrow & take the interview instead!

I explained to her how complex the situation is and that I need to cancel many other things and get embarrassed with the family averting such commitment. When she insisted more I told her that I will deliver such thing to my parents & have things discussed. Surly they had a negative response, therefore I went to the Airport next day boarding the plane at 10 am right before something happens to the airplane itself where we were asked to move to the transit hall and wait “until further comment”. When I turned on my mobile phone – with little charge left – she called & told me that I should cease such chance & come! That moment I was thinking in my head “am I this terribly wanted…!?!??!? I mean, why can’t they wait a little?! I’ll be back in less than 10 days!!!” Dad spoke to her this time & asked her to stop calling & call back after 9 days, so that what happened 9 more days, back to Bahrain & a phone call was made to me from Zain. “Mr. Qasim, tomorrow at 10 is fine for you?” This time it was surly fine, as I was able to prepare myself mentally & physically for the interview.

Interview’s day was nice, beautiful with birds singing over some trees outside the building, me wearing a nice suite with high spirits. I reached the room of the interview, and once I placed my “right” foot in the room the NOC manager (not the same dude I spoke of in the first part of my story, but another Palestinian guy I saw once or twice in 2005, forgot his name) simply stood up, pointed his finger on me, and said with a quit loud voice “THIS is the person who would rather take a vocation than attending the interview” and unleashing Armageddon on me from then on…

“What did they teach you in college? What is the Mobile System is made of??? Did they teach you IPv4 Protocol or the OSI Model? (in the time we were taught the OSI Model) What is the structure of the IPv4??? See! His capabilities are not adequate for us and he is not qualified to work in such position! You’ll have to do many reports & work shift-based hours some would be long until sunrise, you will be alone with the Security guard only outside the building… Son, do you know what position are you applying for?? (At that moment with all the confusion of the his altitude & the harness of the situation I was mixed up and said a different but somehow similar position) Look people! He doesn’t know what position he’s applying for!” In the silence of the IT Director – who seemed like a nice person – and the poor HR (different than the one who called me, my cousin’s friend who was the only one holding a colored copy of my CV with a nice framed drew with her pen on my picture – looking down most of the time in shame of what is happening, who asked me whether I am interested in a Business oriented (none technical) job in Zain in which I told her that I prefer an IT-related position rather than a business oriented one.

I got a hint that I will be rejected by what would-be my boss (The NOC manager), and after a week of shaking their hands in the interview right after short-answering my questions and thanking them for their “valuable time”, I received a rejection letter from her explaining the rejection with “finding someone better than me.” I didn’t tell my parents about the letter, but let things move smooth & have such experience forgotten. Somehow I felt that the NOC manager had someone else to get, maybe a relative or so to have him hired in Zain. But all-in-all, literally, it was the most humiliating, not interview but situation I ever got in the whole 22 years of my life back then! By then, I was not able to recall a worse situation not due to what was said by that person, but because I was not able to confront him with the type & way of questions he was asking due to the nature of “corporate interviews” and didn’t want to seem as the impolite person in the room, having my rejection decision justified. I thought that if my major and therefore my job type would necessitate me working with that guy & having him as my boss I would better NOT to work with Zain at all. I really lost all respect to that person since then due to what he made me go through.

Part 2 is to follow. Next, what happened to me when I decided to forget the past & start all over again!

FLAMA-BOOLIA!

2008-11-03T10:07:00.001+03:00

OH MY DEAR LORD!

THAT WAS... COOL! :-D

JUMPING OVER A "MOUNTAIN" AND LANDING SAFELY IN THE NEXT VALLY AFTER FLYING OVER THE ROCKS... WITH NOTHING BUT A WINGY-JUMPING SUIT... DAAAM! THAT WAS DARING!

PEOPLE... WATCH IT!

What Bush is trying to do...

2008-10-19T11:34:00.000+03:00

Watch this:

And read this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

And you will know why Americans were allowed to posses guns since the early days of its independence :-)

Nice day!

Who is Vladimir Putin?

2008-10-17T12:58:00.000+03:00

Vladimir Putin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

Prime Minister of Russia
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin Влади́мир Влади́мирович Пу́тин

Incumbent
Assumed office 8 May 2008
President	Dmitry Medvedev
Deputy	Viktor Zubkov Igor Shuvalov
Preceded by	Viktor Zubkov
In office 8 August 1999 – 7 May 2000
President	Boris Yeltsin
Preceded by	Sergei Stepashin
Succeeded by	Mikhail Kasyanov
President of Russia
In office 7 May 2000 – 7 May 2008 Acting: 31 December 1999 – 7 May 2000
Prime Minister	Mikhail Kasyanov Viktor Khristenko (Acting) Mikhail Fradkov Viktor Zubkov
Preceded by	Boris Yeltsin
Succeeded by	Dmitry Medvedev
Chairman of United Russia
Incumbent
Assumed office 7 May 2008
Preceded by	Boris Gryzlov

Born	October 7, 1952 (1952-10-07) (age 56) Leningrad, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union (now Saint Petersburg, Russia)
Political party	CPSU (prior 1991) Non-partisan (since 1991) United Russia (Chairman non-member)^[1]
Spouse	Lyudmila Putina^[2]
Children	Mariya (1985), Katerina (1986)
Alma mater	Leningrad State University, now Saint Petersburg State University
Religion	Russian Orthodox
Signature

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (Russian: Влади́мир Влади́мирович Пу́тин^?·i Russian pronunciation: [vlɐˈdʲimʲɪr vlɐˈdʲimʲɪrəvʲɪt͡ɕ ˈputʲɪn]; born 7 October 1952 in Leningrad, USSR; now Saint Petersburg, Russia) was the second President of Russia and is the current Prime Minister of Russia as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, succeeding Boris Yeltsin, and then won the 2000 presidential election. In 2004, he was re-elected for a second term lasting until 7 May 2008.

Throughout his presidential terms and into his second term as Prime Minister, Putin has enjoyed high approval ratings amongst the Russian public. During his eight years in office, the economy bounced back from crisis, seeing GDP increase six-fold (72% in PPP),^[3]^[4] poverty cut more than half^[5]^[6]^[7] and average monthly salaries increase from $80 to $640, or by 150% in real rates.^[8]^[3] At the same time, his conduct in office has been questioned by domestic dissenters, as well as foreign governments and human rights organizations, for his handling of internal conflicts in Chechnya and Dagestan, his record on internal human rights and freedoms, his relations with former Soviet Republics, and his relations with the so-called oligarchs.^{[citation needed]} This was seen by the Kremlin as a series of anti-Russian propaganda attacks orchestrated by western opponents and exiled oligarchs.^[9]

Due to constitutionally mandated term limits, Putin was ineligible to run for a third consecutive Presidential term. After the victory of his successor, Dmitry Medvedev, in the 2008 presidential elections, he was then nominated by the latter to be Russia's Prime Minister; Putin took the post on 8 May 2008.

Early life and KGB career

His mother, Maria Ivanovna, was a factory worker and his father, Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin, was conscripted into the Soviet Navy, where he served in the submarine fleet in the early 1930s.^[10] His father subsequently served with the NKVD in a sabotage group during World War II.^[11] Two elder brothers were born in the mid-1930s; one died within a few months of birth; the second succumbed to diphtheria during the siege of Leningrad. His paternal grandfather, Spiridon Putin, had been Vladimir Lenin's and Joseph Stalin's personal cook.^[12]

His autobiography, Ot Pervovo Litsa, (English: First Person)^[10] is based on Putin's interviews, speaks of humble beginnings, including early years in a communal apartment. According to Putin, in his youth, he was eager to emulate the intelligence officer characters played on the Soviet screen by actors such as Vyacheslav Tikhonov and Georgiy Zhzhonov.

Putin graduated from the International Law branch of the Law Department of the Leningrad State University in 1975. His final thesis was on an international law theme: Russian: «Принцип наиболее благоприятствуемой нации»^[13] ("The principle of most favored nation").

Thereafter he was recruited to the KGB. At the University he also became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and remained a member until the party was dissolved in December 1991.^[14]^[15]

He worked in the Leningrad and Leningrad region Fifth Directorate of the KGB, which combated political dissent in the Soviet Union. In 1976 he completed the KGB retraining course in Okhta, Leningrad. The available information about his first years at the KGB is somewhat contradictory; according to some sources,^[16] he completed the other retraining course at the Dzerzhinsky KGB Higher School in Moscow and then in 1985—the Red Banner Yuri Andropov KGB Institute in Moscow (now the Academy of Foreign Intelligence), whereupon (or earlier) he joined the KGB First Chief Directorate (Foreign intelligence branch).

From 1985 to 1990 the KGB stationed Putin in Dresden, East Germany.^[17] Following the collapse of the East German regime, Putin was recalled to the Soviet Union and returned to Leningrad, where in June 1991 he assumed a position with the International Affairs section of Leningrad State University, reporting to Vice-Rector Yuriy Molchanov. In his new position, Putin grew reacquainted with Anatoly Sobchak, then mayor of Leningrad. Sobchak served as an Assistant Professor during Putin's university years and was one of Putin's lecturers. Putin formally resigned from the state security services on 20 August 1991, during the KGB-supported abortive putsch against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

Early political career

In May 1990, Putin was appointed Mayor Sobchak's advisor on international affairs. On 28 June 1991, he was appointed head of the Committee for External Relations of the Saint Petersburg Mayor's Office, with responsibility for promoting international relations and foreign investments. The Committee was also used to register business ventures in Saint Petersburg.^[18] Less than one year after taking control of the committee, Putin was investigated by a commission of the city legislative council. Commission deputies Marina Salye and Yury Gladkov concluded that Putin understated prices and issued licenses permitting the export of non-ferrous metals valued at a total of $93 million in exchange for food aid from abroad that never came to the city.^[19]^[20]^[21]^[22]^[23]^[14] The commission recommended Putin be fired, but there were no immediate consequences. Putin remained head of the Committee for External Relations until 1996. While heading the Committee for External Relations, from 1992 to March 2000 Putin was also on the advisory board of the German real estate holding Saint Petersburg Immobilien und Beteiligungs AG (SPAG) which has been investigated by German prosecutors for money laundering.^[24]^[25]^[26]^[27]^[28]^[18]

From 1994 to 1997, Putin was appointed to additional positions in the Saint Petersburg political arena. In March 1994 he became first deputy head of the administration of the city of Saint Petersburg. In 1995 (through June 1997) Putin led the Saint Petersburg branch of the pro-government Our Home Is Russia political party.^[29]^[14] During this same period from 1995 through June 1997 he was also the head of the Advisory Board of the JSC Newspaper Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti.^[18]^[29]

In 1996, Anatoly Sobchak lost the Saint Petersburg mayoral election to Vladimir Yakovlev. Putin was called to Moscow and in June 1996 assumed position of a Deputy Chief of the Presidential Property Management Department headed by Pavel Borodin. He occupied this position until March 1997. On 26 March 1997 President Boris Yeltsin appointed Putin deputy chief of Presidential Staff, which he remained until May 1998, and chief of the Main Control Directorate of the Presidential Property Management Department (until June 1998).

On 27 June 1997, at the Saint Petersburg Mining Institute Putin defended his Candidate of Science dissertation in economics titled "The Strategic Planning of Regional Resources Under the Formation of Market Relations".^[30] According to Clifford G Gaddy, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, 16 of the 20 pages that open a key section of Putin’s work were copied either word for word or with minute alterations from a management study, Strategic Planning and Policy, written by US professors William King and David Cleland and translated into Russian by a KGB-related institute in the early 1990s.^[31] 6 diagrams and tables were also copied.^[32]

On 25 May 1998, Putin was appointed First Deputy Chief of Presidential Staff for regions, replacing Viktoriya Mitina; and, on 15 July, the Head of the Commission for the preparation of agreements on the delimitation of power of regions and the federal center attached to the President, replacing Sergey Shakhray. After Putin's appointment, the commission completed no such agreements, although during Shakhray's term as the Head of the Commission there were 46 agreements signed.^[33] On 25 July 1998 Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin head of the FSB (one of the successor agencies to the KGB), the position Putin occupied until August 1999. He became a permanent member of the Security Council of the Russian Federation on 1 October 1998 and its Secretary on 29 March 1999. In April 1999, FSB Chief Vladimir Putin and Interior Minister Sergei Stepashin held a televised press conference in which they discussed a video that had aired nationwide 17 March on the state-controlled Russia TV channel which showed a naked man very similar to the Prosecutor General of Russia, Yury Skuratov, in bed with two young women. Putin claimed that expert FSB analysis proved the man on the tape to be Skuratov and that the orgy had been paid for by persons investigated for criminal offences.^[34]^[35] Skuratov had been adversarial toward President Yeltsin and had been aggressively investigating government corruption^[36].

On 15 June 2000, The Times reported that Spanish police discovered that Putin had secretly visited a villa in Spain belonging to the oligarch Boris Berezovsky on up to five different occasions in 1999.^[37]

Prime Ministry (1999)

On 9 August 1999, Vladimir Putin was appointed one of three First Deputy Prime Ministers, which enabled him later on that day, as the previous government led by Sergei Stepashin had been sacked, to be appointed acting Prime Minister of the Government of the Russian Federation by President Boris Yeltsin.^[38] Yeltsin also announced that he wanted to see Putin as his successor. Later, that same day, Putin agreed to run for the presidency.^[39] On 16 August, the State Duma approved his appointment as Prime Minister with 233 votes in favour (vs. 84 against, 17 abstained),^[40] while a simple majority of 226 was required, making him Russia's fifth PM in less than eighteen months. On his appointment, few expected Putin, virtually unknown to the general public, to last any longer than his predecessors. Yeltsin's main opponents and would-be successors, Moscow Mayor Yuriy Luzhkov and former Chairman of the Russian Government Yevgeniy Primakov, were already campaigning to replace the ailing president, and they fought hard to prevent Putin's emergence as a potential successor. Putin's law-and-order image and his unrelenting approach to the renewed crisis in Chechnya soon combined to raise his popularity and allowed him to overtake all rivals.

Putin's rise to public office in August 1999 coincided with an aggressive resurgence of the near-dormant conflict in the North Caucasus, when a number of Chechens invaded a neighboring region starting the War in Dagestan. Both in Russia and abroad, Putin's public image was forged by his tough handling of the war. On assuming the role of acting President on 31 December 1999, Putin went on a previously scheduled visit to Russian troops in Chechnya. In 2003, a controversial referendum was held in Chechnya adopting a new constitution which declares the Republic as a part of Russia. Chechnya has been gradually stabilized with the parliamentary elections and the establishment of a regional government.^[41]^[42] Throughout the war Russia has severely disabled the Chechen rebel movement, although sporadic violence still occurs throughout the North Caucasus.^[43]

While not formally associated with any party, Putin pledged his support to the newly formed Unity Party,^[44] which won the second largest percentage of the popular vote (23.3%) in the December 1999 Duma elections, and in turn he was supported by it. Putin appeared to be ideally positioned to win the presidency in elections due the following summer.^{[citation needed]}

Presidency

See also: Vladimir Putin legislation and program

First term (2000 – 2004)

His rise to Russia's highest office ended up being even more rapid: on 31 December 1999, Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned and, according to the constitution, Putin became (acting) President of the Russian Federation.

The first Decree that Putin signed 31 December 1999, was the one "On guarantees for former president of the Russian Federation and members of his family".^[45]^[46] This ensured that "corruption charges against the outgoing President and his relatives" would not be pursued, although this claim is not strictly verifiable.^[47] Later on 12 February 2001 Putin signed a federal law on guarantees for former presidents and their families (See Vladimir Putin legislation and program), which replaced the similar decree. In 1999, Yeltsin and his family were under scrutiny for charges related to money-laundering by the Russian and Swiss authorities.^[48]

While his opponents had been preparing for an election in June 2000, Yeltsin's resignation resulted in the elections being held within three months, in March.^{[citation needed]} Presidential elections were held on 26 March 2000; Putin won in the first round.^{[citation needed]}

Vladimir Putin was inaugurated president on 7 May 2000. He appointed Financial minister Mikhail Kasyanov as his Prime minister. Having announced his intention to consolidate power in the country into a strict vertical, in May 2000 he issued a decree dividing 89 federal subjects of Russia between 7 federal districts overseen by representatives of him in order to facilitate federal administration. In July 2000, according to a law proposed by him and approved by the Russian parliament, Putin also gained the right to dismiss heads of the federal subjects.

During his first term in office, he moved to curb the political ambitions of some of the Yeltsin-era oligarchs such as former Kremlin insider Boris Berezovsky, who had "helped Mr Putin enter the family, and funded the party that formed Mr Putin's parliamentary base", according to BBC profile.^[49]^[50] At the same time, according to Vladimir Solovyev, it was Alexey Kudrin who was instrumental in Putin's assignment to the Presidential Administration of Russia to work with Pavel Borodin,^[51] and according to Solovyev, Berezovsky was proposing Igor Ivanov rather than Putin as a new president.^[52] A new group of business magnates, such as Gennady Timchenko, Vladimir Yakunin, Yuriy Kovalchuk, Sergey Chemezov, with close personal ties to Putin, emerged. Corruption grew by the magnitude of several times and assumed "systemic and institutionalised" form, according to a report by Boris Nemtsov as well as other sources.^[53]^[54]^[55]^[56]^[57]^[58] Corruption was characterized by Putin himself as "the most wearying and difficult to resolve" problem he encountered during his two terms in office.^[59]

The first major challenge to Putin's popularity came in August 2000, when he came in for serious criticism in relation to his ignoring of the Kursk submarine disaster.^[60]

Putin and George Bush signing SORT

In December 2000, Putin sanctioned the law to change the National Anthem of Russia. At the time the Anthem had music by Glinka and no words. The change was to restore (with a minor modification) the music of the post-1944 Soviet anthem by Alexandrov, while the new text was composed by Mikhalkov.^[61]^[62]

Many in the Russian press and in the international media warned that the death of some 130 hostages in the special forces' rescue operation during the 2002 Moscow theater hostage crisis would severely damage President Putin's popularity. However, shortly after the siege had ended, the Russian president is enjoying record public approval ratings - 83% of Russians declared themselves satisfied with the Putin's rule and his ruthless handling of the siege.^[63]

The arrest in early July 2003 of Platon Lebedev, a Mikhail Khodorkovsky partner and second largest shareholder in Yukos, on suspicion of illegally acquiring a stake in a state-owned fertiliser firm, Apatit, in 1994, foreshadowed what by the end of the year became a full-fledged prosecution of Yukos and its management for fraud, embezzlement and tax evasion.

A few month before the elections, Putin fired Kasyanov's cabinet and appointed relatively obscure Mikhail Fradkov to his place. Sergey Ivanov became the first civilian in Russia to take Defence Minister position.

Read the rest @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Putin...

MUCH better than many other presidents bios! :-D

Good day ;-)

KILL MICKEY!!!

2008-10-10T16:00:00.000+03:00

Absolutely...

Nooooooo cooooomments..!!!!

"Thought helmets" could enable voiceless troop communication

2008-09-22T20:58:00.000+03:00

by Darren Murph, posted Sep 22nd 2008 at 9:06AM

This won't mark the first time the US government has looked into other means for helping soldiers communicate on the battlefield, but it's one of the first instances where vocal cords aren't even necessary. The US Army has recently awarded a $4 million contract to a coalition of scientists, all of which will soon start developing a "thought helmet" to enable voiceless, secure communication between comrades. In theory, at least, the helmet will boast a litany of sensors that will hopefully "lead to direct mental control of military systems by thought alone." According to Dr. Elmar Schmoozer, the Army neuroscience overseeing the program, the system will be like "radio without a microphone." Oh, and don't think for a second that they aren't considering civilian applications as well -- passing along jokes on the boss via telekinesis? Yes, please.

[Via Slashdot]

Believe it or not... We're in the future already :-D

Cheers ;-)

A very interesting excersise

2008-08-24T03:13:00.001+03:00

... Called "Win as much as you can" that I conducted 2 years in ago AIESEC Bahrain and ended with "unbelievable" results with me.

http://media.wiley.com/assets/149/39/sample_download.pdf

The "unbelieved part" is felt when conducting this exercise. Google-it for more information.

Cheers!

The big brother is watching!

2008-09-10T15:31:00.000+03:00

From:
http://tech.msn.com/security/articlecnet.aspx?cp-documentid=10041172&GT1=40000

The Internet -- A Private Eye's Best Friend

By Elinor Mills, CNET News.com

NEW YORK -- For private investigator Steven Rambam, the Internet is his most valuable tool in helping to find missing persons, cheating husbands, and your competitor's dirty secrets.

But while the intelligence business is booming, individuals are losing the battle to protect their privacy with every blog post, Google Web search, and online photo, Rambam, director of the Pallorium investigative agency, said in a keynote session at the Last HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth) conference.

"Anything you put on the Internet will be grabbed, indexed, cataloged, and out of your control before you know it," he told CNET News after the July 19 session. "The genie is out of the bottle. Data doesn't stay in one location. It migrates to hundreds of places."

Information that he used to have to search for or dig up in faraway places is now available at his fingertips. All types of information is being digitized, older stuff is being scanned and put online, and it's all being aggregated into uber-databases that are being sold to marketers, government agencies, and anyone else who can pay, he said.

Rambam says he searches on social networks to find photos of people he is researching, the first step in any investigation. He gets a lot of other vital data from those sites, like hometown, age, relationship status, school and work history, hobbies, and friends and acquaintances to interview. With Twitter, he can often see where they are right now, or at least in the recent archived past.

"I used to pay the police $500 for a driver's license photo. Now I just have to go to MySpace," he said. "I can find your location without leaving my desk."

He uses job sites to see someone's résumé, date of birth, address, and work history, to find former employees of companies he is researching and to see what job openings they have and compare salary levels. And then there are sites like Don'tDateHimGirl.com and Who'sARat.com where you can find what a person's enemies have to say.

Rambam also gets information from marketing databases that gather information on people's buying habits and preferences from frequent-customer cards, surveys, product registrations, actual transactions, and other activities.

Marketing databases with vast amounts of personal records are being purchased by the government, he said. At the same time, individuals have less power to learn what information is being gathered on them and how it is being used, because private entities are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, he added.

"Domino's has built the biggest consumer database in America," and the U.S. Marshals Service, the New York Police Department and collection agencies are using it to track people down, Rambam said.

There also are vast stores of data based on people's Web and computer activities being amassed by technology companies that can be easily used to connect a specific individual to specific activities and information. For example, end user license agreements allow for location data to be sent back to the manufacturer every time a customer logs in, and photos and burned CDs and DVDs have unique serial numbers for tracking, he said.

Then there is the "snitch" in everyone's pocket -- the cell phone. Unlike your activity on a computer, "a cell phone can be immediately traced to you and you have it with you 24/7," Rambam said.

"Cell phones change everything," because of their location-based technology, he said. "I'm able to know who you talked to, where you are, what you do, and what you like just from cross-referencing cell phone (data)."

Finally, cameras and video cameras have helped revolutionize the snooping industry. Smart cameras with facial and activity recognition analytic capabilities are popping up everywhere, while the FBI and others are testing systems that will recognize the walking gait of individuals, Rambam said.

There are police helicopters in New York that can see what a car passenger is reading. New York is partnering with businesses and landlords to install 3,000 cameras in lower Manhattan and has spent $450 million to install 3,000 cameras in the subway, he said.

In a test of his skills, Rambam tracked down someone who had agreed to go into hiding for one year. He was able to locate the person nine times, using methods including social engineering and a dummy e-mail account, tracking the IP address of an Internet cafe computer, cell phone triangulation, a credit card trace on an airline ticket using a frequent flier number, a fake Match.com ad, and an online "wanted" poster.

Rambam, who details the experiment in a book titled Stealing Your Own Identity, also was able to track his subject through his pharmacy and doctor.

And in an ingenious move, he noticed that there were blocks of photos with consecutive unique IDs on the subject's Web site that were missing. So he searched for photos with ID numbers that would fit in that sequence on Flickr and found shots that gave away his target's whereabouts.

Although he works closely with law enforcement agencies, Rambam has had a legal run-in of his own, just like some of the hackers in the audience. He had been scheduled to speak at the previous HOPE in 2006, but was arrested right before he was to give his talk and spent two days in jail on charges of impersonating an FBI agent and tampering with a government witness. The charges were dropped, he said.

Well well well... And we've been blaming the CIA for quite a while, eh? :-D

You: Not online = not existing!

Cheers, and happy browsing :-D

Stupidity

2008-08-19T23:42:00.001+03:00

Abraham Lincoln (attributed):

'Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.

Albert Einstein:

Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds.

Albert Einstein:

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.

Aldous Huxley:

At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.

Aldous Huxley:

At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.

Aldous Huxley:

At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.

Bertrand Russell:

Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.

Bill Cosby:

A word to the wise ain't necessary, it's the stupid ones who need the advice.

Edwin Land:

Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity.

Elbert Hubbard:

Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.

Friedrich von Schiller:

With stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.

Isaac Asimov:

[W]hen people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.

John Stuart Mill:

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.

Malcolm Forbes:

The dumbest people I know are those who know it all.

Mark Twain:

First, God created idiots. That was just for practice. Then He created school boards.

P. J. O'Rourke:

Then there's politics. Just imagine politics with its dumbbell element subtracted. There would be no Republican candidates. There would be no Democratic voters. The whole system would collapse.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

Sam Levenson:

It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and say the opposite.

Tom DeLay:

Guns have little or nothing to do with juvenile violence. The causes of youth violence are working parents who put their kids into daycare, the teaching of evolution in the schools, and working mothers who take birth control pills. [on causes of the Columbine High School massacre, 1999]

Will Rogers:

If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?