Saleh Blog

Of the top ten winners at the 2008 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ACM ICPC) competing to be the best computer programmers in the world, four teams were from Russian universities, one was from Ukraine, a former member of the USSR, and three were teams representing universities in North America, including Canada and the United States. First place went to St. Petersburg University of Information Technology, Mechanics and Optics (Russia), followed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (U.S.), Izhevsk State Technical University (Russia), Lviv National University (Ukraine), and Moscow State University (Russia). Also among the top ten finishers were teams from Tsinghua University (China), Stanford University (U.S.), University of Zagreb (Croatia), University of Waterloo (Canada), and Petrozavodsk State University (Russia). This international competition, now in its 32^nd year, is hosted by ACM (the Association for Computing Machinery), a society of 88,000 computing educators, researchers, and professionals worldwide.

Read the press release.

You can see videos and photos of the event available here. You’ll notice that the interface of the web site has changed 🙂

Dr. Craig R. Barret, Intel’s CEO, has visited Kuwait University last Thursday April 10th, 2008. He was hosted in a Q&A session arranged by CS Club and Computer Science Department in Kuwait University.

In his talk he focused in how to establish a good education system that can be compared to education systems around the world, not only in the Middle-East. Three characteristics have to be available to create an excellent education system which are: smart people, smart ideas, and good universities to provide a good environment for smart people to look for smart ideas.

Smart ideas can be found when doing basic researches, not in developing ideas. Companies like Intel spends millions of dollars in developing, however, Intel cooperates with universities to conduct basic researches. Stanford University in Silicon Valley is a good example of a university that spends millions in basic research. Intel spends 6 billion dollars in research yearly, but only 200 million in basic research.

We do not need a huge research budget to create a good idea, what we need is passion, training, and good universities.

Dr. Craig Barret will continue his trip to visiting Dubai, Saudi Arabia, and Abu Dhabi. His goal on the trip is to see what’s happening in the ground with his own eyes and visit some technology professionals in universities in the Middle-East.

The session was so informative, and I am so happy to attend it. I also have to say that not even 1 instructor from our department, computer engineering, was there, how pathetic! That’s not like it wasn’t expected. However, a faculty member from electrical engineering has been sighted there!

I’m also glad that some of my friends had shown up.

Best Scene: Miss. Clinton Slaps Mrs. Clinton

Does this mean the beginning of the end? Will robots replace human beings? Only time can say…

Good news, it turns out that robots have no feelings after all. I can now kick and destroy this worthless giant piece of machine which was my wish for ages.

Want to be one of the first Mars settlers? Project Virgle, a combinational effort from Google and Virgin to go to Mars and live in an alien planet. Be the experimental rate and enjoy a new life away from Mother Earth!

April’s Fool!

Sydeny, Chicago, Manila and many other cities have turned its light off at March 29th, 8pm. But Google in unexpected move has turned off its light at Google.co.uk homepage.

Google users in the United Kingdom will notice today that we “turned the lights out” on the Google.co.uk homepage as a gesture to raise awareness of a worldwide energy conservation effort called Earth Hour. As to why we don’t do this permanently – it saves no energy; modern displays use the same amount of power regardless of what they display. However, you can do something to reduce the energy consumption of your home PC by joining the Climate Savers Computing Initiative.

More…

Google, Yahoo, and MySpace announced today the formation of OpenSocial Foundation. It is a move to help web developers build better social applications using OpenSocial API.

In my opinion, I think this is a big step towards Web 3.0 as some predicts that the World Wide Web will be seen as a single database in the web 3.0 era.

Global warming is a danger issue we are facing on earth. All of us, including you, we are contributing in the destruction of earth with our daily life. We all feel the change in the climate but poor countries as in mid-Africa are mostly affected by the climate change. Hell, now its is spring and the temprature is about 40 Celius here in Kuwait.

I’m taking part in Earth Hour 2008 and I strongly recommend all of you to do the same.

Turn off your light at 8pm for an hour in March 29

For more information about the event, visit my personal web page of Earth Hour 2008. And here’s a video about Earth Hour 2008: