Unconventional World Records

After 11 months, it’s bye bye blogger.com

Due to the following factors I have decided to move to livejournal.com:
- faster access/updates
- no adverts
- even easier customisation

The existing blogs here MIGHT move there too.

But, I will move back if blogger.com proves itself to be better. Only time will tell.

Future blogs will be at http://www.livejournal.com/users/pinolobu/

A mathematical proof that God exists, by Jonathan Bowers, the Polyhedron Dude

Now for something quite controversial in nature:
“The Quran testifies that the Apostles were given the same inspiration (wahi) that the earlier Prophets and Muhammad afterwards were given. It also states that God would insure that the true disciples of Jesus Christ would prevail and dominate till the Resurrection Day. Since the Day of Resurrection has not arrived, this would mean that true Christianity still exists. This would also compel us to accept the Bible as authoritative and inspired since it is the only testimony given by the God-inspired Apostles to their followers, a testimony that Allah himself said would remain and prevail against the attacks of the unbelievers. For a Muslim to say that the Bible has been corrupted would mean that God failed to keep his promise and that the Quran is wrong.”

Original source.

Hmm, things are getting more interesting….

The website was founded by “Walid and Shimoun[1], Ex-Muslims - one Arab, one Pakistani who discovered G-d’s love for Israel. They believe in the G-d of Israel (YHWH) who re-established Israel in her original land in 1948 as he promised in the Bible (Isa 66:8), they proclaim that (Jesus of Nazareth) of Israel is Yeshua who died for their sins and became their sin offering. It is time for people to look at the Hebrew Scriptures to discover the truth.”

Yet, they say [2]:

“We reject any church or group that is a member of the World Council of Churches …… We reject Evangelicals and Catholics together as part of the falling away who teach false doctrines. …… We reject the Faith Theology Movements, Charismatic Catholics, …., Toronto Blessing, …. or anyone similar or associated with these as part of a counterfeit revival.”

I wonder why they don’t pronounce the word “God” fully.

So they are “Christian”, but neither Protestant nor Catholic nor practice Judaism.

Sounds like a CULT………….

ref:
[1] http://www.abrahamic-faith.com/who_are_we.html
[2] http://www.abrahamic-faith.com/statement.html
[3] http://www.abrahamic-faith.com

With the ongoing election fever, here are some election type SMSes received recently. Warning, some are politically incorrect!

breaking news: dato samy vellu will be standing in cameron highlands in the forthcoming general elections cos he insists on a landslide victory.

a girl asks pas imam: what’s devil, hell and heaven? Imam explain: between my 2 legs is the devil, between your 2 legs is hell, lock the devil in hell and we’ll enter heaven.

umno ada keris, dap ada roket, pas ada bulan. tapi setajam mana keris, sepanjang mana roket, kalau datang bulan (haid), keris dan roket simpan dalam seluar je le!

pahang telah kehilangan MB nya khalil yaakob bila adnan yaakob mengambilalih jawatan. kini adnan akan mengundurkan diri dan pahang akan diterajui oleh MB baru iaitu salih yaakob

about IPv6

just sharing something about the next generation of ipv6, after going to ip awareness training conducted by peter warren (CISCO instructor)

what happened to ipv5? it’s basically another research branch that went dead, while ipv6 survived.

but adoption slow.

how many ip addresses can ipv6 handle?

there’s some discrepancy over this. peter warren said 10 to the power of 57, and “it’s possible to give an ip address to every atom in the universe!”

ipv4 uses 32 bit address space => 10 to the power of 9 i.e. about 4 billion possible ip addresses; there’s now “around 30 million webservers in the world”
ipv6 uses 128 bit address space => according to wikipedia.org, 10 to the power of 38
according to astronomycafe.net, the number of atoms in the known/visible universe: 10 to the power of 77
so it’s not quite enough to cover everything, but think about it, who wants to give an ip address to EVERY sand on EVERY beach in the world?

still, ipv4 served us well for 30-40 years, so ipv6 surely could do so for another 30-40 yrs

majority of world still running on ipv4

there is no cut-off point, it will happen to our org when the cost of staying at ipv4 is greater than the cost of migrating to ipv6

you can connect ipv6 net to another ipv6 net thru ipv4 net via tunelling

routers already support ipv6, only need to enable IOS

peter warren: “microsoft doesnt produce ipv6 stack yet”

hence in LAN, you only need 3rd party ip stack running on top of the OS.

Linux already support ipv6

the present hardware in LAN will work nicely with ipv6, cos switches, NICs, Ethernet cables working on layer 2 (datalink) is oblivious of all this stuff.

What is the biggest number?

A named number, that is.

We might’ve heard of googool (1 followed by 100 zeroes) or googoolplex (1 followed by a googol zeroes).

But these are rather small when compared to “infinity scrapers”.

There isn’t a googool of anything, cos there are ONLY around 10 to the power of 77 atoms in the known universe, which should be big enough a number to overwhelm anybody, but a crazy guy by the name of Jonathan Bowers thinks this is not big enough. So off he goes exploring even bigger numbers.

I say he’s crazy cos he even claims to be able to describe what heaven is like and what a space with 4 dimensions look like.

He says, “I’ll start with the “smaller” numbers, such as a googol and a googolplex, then start going into larger and larger numbers like a gongulus and a golapulus.”

Then he goes on to describe numbers with names such as tetratri, pentadecal, xappol, goppatoth, great big boowa and wompogulus.

His numbers are so big that they require array notations to represent.

The biggest named number in his list is called, hold you breath, a “Guapamongaplex”, which is “10^100 array of B’s within guapamonga-level “# #”, where B is a 10^10 array of 10’s”, whatever that means. I can’t even tell how many zeros after 1 this number contains.

So now you can go around and say, “give me a guapamongaplex of that, won’t you?”

Full text:
http://members.aol.com/hedrondude/scrapers.html

11th General Elections, 21 March 2004

The Star online special section

Well, here we go again……………seems 1999 was but a few weeks ago.

Sabah DUN dissolved: 5th march 2004. First time ever state and parliament elections held simultaneously in the land below the wind.

Nomination day highlights:
5 BN candidates in Sabah returned unopposed - parlimen papar, kalabakan, sipitang, beaufort, beluran.

Pre-election highlights
Only Muslims allowed to be PM if PAS rules - PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang wants the Federal Constitution to be amended to allow only a Muslim (of any race) to become Prime Minister. Currently, in theory, even a Catholic can be the Malaysian PM. Nice thought?

Jeffrey Kitingan wants to head sabah opposition alliance, Christina Liew not so keen

MIC dropped deputy prez Datuk S Subramaniam from nomination list for general election, party president Datuk Seri S Samy Vellu said. He gave no reason.

kota belud: bro vs sis: salleh (UMNO, ex-CM) vs saidatul (Keadilan Sabah chief)
hotseat: which bn candidate will stand at moyog/kepayan?
setia in trouble again, even before elections - 2 presidents?

DPM ticks off Datuk John Ghani, the Sabah Umno deputy information chief who threatened to contest as an independent because the Kuala Penyu state seat would be allocated to another party. He said: “accept decisions made by the leadership. We realise that not all decisions will be wholeheartedly accepted by members at division levels. But based on the spirit of co-operation and power-sharing in Barisan Nasional, we have to compromise and offer seats to our friends in the coalition. The important thing is that everyone accepts Umno as the backbone of the coalition. I appeal to Ghani and everyone else not to leave the party to contest as independents because this will force the party to take action. They will NOT be accepted back into Umno EVEN IF THEY WIN. Sometimes, the decision is in our favour and at other times it is not. If they love the party, they will uphold it by accepting the decision.”

when the boss says do it, just do it - Registrar of Societies reinstates PBDS, a mere 3 months after it was deregistered, according to prez Datuk Daniel Tajem. This was after the party appealed to the PM/Home Minister.

World Team Table Tennis Championships 2004, Qatar

Men’s Final: China 3-0 Germany
Timo Boll did his best, but can’t get the better of Wang Hao
Ma Lin and — finished it off.

So here I am, been blogging for almost a year now (since that fateful decision in April 2003). Just now I ran into an article by the one and only John C Dvorak of PC Magazine on this very topic. It’s dated 5th Feb 2002, so I’m more than 2 years late, but IMO it’s still very relevant. And I was wondering why I created my “vanity” web page (I think could also call that one hardcoded web blogging) at geocities.com in 1996 but have not updated for about 6 years. Or that why I gave up painstakingly updating my site at sabah.net, except in rare cases.

————————————-
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,12899,00.asp

The Blog Phenomenon
By John C. Dvorak
February 5, 2002

A recent overlooked Web trend�overlooked by the mainstream media, at least�is the proliferation of public diaries, generically referred to as Blogs. The term originated from “WeB log” and was further promoted by pyra.com as a Blog at its www.blogger.com site, although www.pita.com is considered the original source of easy-to-use Web logging. People who “Blog” are called Bloggers, and right now there are hundreds, thousands of Blogs on the Net.

The vanity page is dead; long live the Blog. The vanity Web page has lost momentum. People who posted one have already done so, and the growth has slowed. Most are uninteresting and uninspired. Cat pictures dominate too many of them. A Blog is the next iteration, and most vanity site mavens have gravitated toward these things. Serious vanity site developers have gone into posting hobby or special-interest sites, having learned by experience how to make an attractive Web page. This is, indeed, progress.

And the universe of these diaries can even be searched at various specialty search sites, such as www.blogfinder.com.

Generally speaking, these postings are fascinating, since they often have serious elements of Hyde Park corner blather, besides blatant exhibitionism and obvious self-indulgence. And whatever you think of them, you’ll admit that they are much more interesting than the static vanity site from years ago.

One of the best examples you’ll find on the Web of a homebrew special-interest site is the stunning Jacob’s Bugatti Pages at http://homepage.mac.com/bugatti/jacob. If you have a hobby and want to make the Web part of that hobby, then look no further than Jacob’s for inspiration. But if you just want to pontificate and talk about yourself, start a Blog.

Blogging goes beyond software posting and uses an entire system that allows for easy creation. With a Blog there is no coding to do. The Blog is usually more attractive than sloppy HTML done by an amateur, and by nature it demands updating so that the material is kept current. People can’t resist updating the diary and apologize if they don’t do it�as if anyone really cares. You have to be dedicated to a Web site to keep it current. Not so the Blog; it’s more addictive. And hobbyist Blogs have emerged. For example, some people like to watch a lot of movies and review them. They see a movie and immediately post their comments. Some of these homebrew reviewers are better than the pros.

Still, with the few hobbyist exceptions, Blogs are mostly personal diaries. Here’s where the sociology comes in. Why, exactly, do people want to have other people read these ramblings? Many are incriminating! Ask a Web log addict why he or she does it and you’ll get a range of answers that tend towards the “because it’s easy” or “because it’s fun!” bromides. I think there are deeper reasons. Here are a few obvious possibilities:

Ego gratification. Some people need to be the center of attention. It makes them feel good about themselves to tell the world what important things they’ve been doing and what profound thoughts they’ve been having. Curiously, while this looks like the most obvious reason for a Web log, I think it’s probably the least likely reason, since it’s too trite and shallow.

Antidepersonalization. When people begin to think that they are nothing more than a cog in the wheel of society, they look for any way to differentiate themselves. The Web log proves they are different. Just read it. You’ll see.

Elimination of frustration. Day-to-day life, especially in the city, is wrought with frustration, and the Web log gives people the ability to complain to the world. You get to read a lot of complaining in these logs. If you think I’m a complainer, oh boy!

Societal need to share. As a cynic who gets paid to write, I have a hard time with this explanation. But it seems some people genuinely like to “share,” and this is one way.

Wanna-be writers. A lot of people want to be published writers. Blogs make it happen without the hassle of getting someone else to do it or having to write well�although there is good writing to be found. Some is shockingly good. Most of it is miserable. I expect to see those Open Learning classes around the country offering courses in Blog writing.

Whatever the reason for the Blog phenomenon, it’s not going to go away anytime soon. The main positive change: far fewer cat pictures!

Understanding Islam: What Is the Difference Between Sunni and Shiite Muslims–and Why Does It Matter?

According to History News Network:
What Is the Difference Between Sunni and Shiite Muslims–and Why Does It Matter?
By HNN Staff

The Islam religion was founded by Mohammed in the seventh century. In 622 he founded the first Islamic state, a theocracy in Medina, a city in western Saudi Arabia located north of Mecca. There are two branches of the religion he founded.

The Sunni branch believes that the first four caliphs–Mohammed’s successors–rightfully took his place as the leaders of Muslims. They recognize the heirs of the four caliphs as legitimate religious leaders. These heirs ruled continuously in the Arab world until the break-up of the Ottoman Empire following the end of the First World War.

Shiites, in contrast, believe that only the heirs of the fourth caliph, Ali, are the legitimate successors of Mohammed. In 931 the Twelfth Imam disappeared. This was a seminal event in the history of Shiite Muslims. According to R. Scott Appleby, a professor of history at the University of Notre Dame, “Shiite Muslims, who are concentrated in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon, [believe they] had suffered the loss of divinely guided political leadership” at the time of the Imam’s disappearance. Not “until the ascendancy of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1978″ did they believe that they had once again begun to live under the authority of a legitimate religious figure.

In a special 9-11 edition of the Journal of American History, Appleby explained that the Shiite outlook is far different from the Sunni’s, a difference that is highly significant:

… for Sunni Muslims, approximately 90 percent of the Muslim world, the loss of the caliphate after World War I was devastating in light of the hitherto continuous historic presence of the caliph, the guardian of Islamic law and the Islamic state. Sunni fundamentalist leaders thereafter emerged in nations such as Egypt and India, where contact with Western political structures provided them with a model awkwardly to imitate … as they struggled after 1924 to provide a viable alternative to the caliphate.
In 1928, four years after the abolishment of the caliphate, the Egyptian schoolteacher Hasan al-Banna founded the first Islamic fundamentalist movement in the Sunni world, the Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun). Al-Banna was appalled by “the wave of atheism and lewdness [that] engulfed Egypt” following World War I. The victorious Europeans had “imported their half-naked women into these regions, together with their liquors, their theatres, their dance halls, their amusements, their stories, their newspapers, their novels, their whims, their silly games, and their vices.” Suddenly the very heart of the Islamic world was penetrated by European “schools and scientific and cultural institutes” that “cast doubt and heresy into the souls of its sons and taught them how to demean themselves, disparage their religion and their fatherland, divest themselves of their traditions and beliefs, and to regard as sacred anything Western.”14 Most distressing to al-Banna and his followers was what they saw as the rapid moral decline of the religious establishment, including the leading sheikhs, or religious scholars, at Al-Azhar, the grand mosque and center of Islamic learning in Cairo. The clerical leaders had become compromised and corrupted by their alliance with the indigenous ruling elites who had succeeded the European colonial masters.

Osama bina Laden is a Sunni Muslim. To him the end of the reign of the caliphs in the 1920s was catastrophic, as he made clear in a videotape made after 9-11. On the tape, broadcast by Al-Jazeera on October 7, 2001, he proclaimed: “What America is tasting now is only a copy of what we have tasted. … Our Islamic nation has been tasting the same for more [than] eighty years, of humiliation and disgrace, its sons killed and their blood spilled, its sanctities desecrated.”

Other websites to pore over:
http://www.understanding-islam.com/related/text.asp?type=question&qid=417

http://www.aljazeerah.info/Islam/Islamic%20subjects/2004%20subjects/January/Payment%20of%20Zakah%20on%20Residential%20Property%20for%20Ones%20Own%20Use,%20Adil%20Salahi.htm