Here are some questions I often wonder about concerning issues of online openness versus privacy:

• As a netizen, do I have the right to retrieve my own information from any Web application where I deposited it?

• Do I have the right to completely erase my own information from any Web application?

• Can I receive proof that the totality of information referring to me is actually accessible to me?

• Can I examine the physical tables of those Web applications to ensure that my information is not at risk?

Contributing to open source means a lot of evening hours spent in front of a computer, that I could spend doing something else - spending time with my wife and daughter, playing music, sports, whatever. Of course, open source is based on passion and that's what drives me.

But the point is that the time spent coding for open source is *unbilled*, meaning I'm not directly making a living from it. I might be re-using open source software for my professional work, but typically the code that I write for paying customers or for my employer is not contributed back to the community.

Rock music is all about expressing strong emotions that consume the band. Maybe that's why most rock bands seem to peak soon after they hit the big time. I've noticed a pattern where the breakthrough album is immediately followed by their best work, only to be followed by disappointing further releases that lead to their break-up or stagnation.

- How much would such a project cost?
- Oh, I'd say about 25K but that's just a NOOMA.

The question of how Twitter will ever make money is on many minds.

For starters, Twitter cannot charge its users. Because all of Twitter is user-generated content, it doesn't make sense to make them pay. Paraphrasing the words of a co-worker: Twitter is doing nothing that can't be achieved using RSS and a 140-chars textarea :-)

The problem is compounded with the fact that Twitter has an API that can help bypass the site altogether, thereby ruling out the traditional - and failed IMO - online advertising revenue model.

What's left? A Twitter Pro with higher level of service?

Like many people, I am obsessed with prime numbers. To understand more about them, I plotted a 2D diagram of the natural numbers, showing for each the prime factors and where they occur. I was astonished to find obvious regularities that, in hindsight, make sense, but that I had never encountered before.

Here's the diagram, made manually on a spreadsheet. I'd love to hear your observations.

Here are mine:

Reading about the closing down of Mexico because of the swine flu resonated with Albert Camus' book I recently re-read, called "The Plague". It was a striking description of the psychological disruptions that occurred in society because of an epidemic. Even the obviously ludicrous comments made by the religious establishment, in that book, were mirrored in real life by some clerics in Egypt invoking the wrath of God as a cause for the flu.

The form فـِــعـِــلْ is an Egyptian form that denotes a subject who is an expert at doing the action.

For example, حـِــرِ كْ and رِ وِ شْ are purely Egyptian words that indicate expertise at their respective actions, namely maneuvering and dazzling.

The Egyptian dialect also changes existing forms.

Try a little experiment: stand in the middle of any Cairene street and loudly call for Mohamed, in a tone that indicates familiarity and slight irritation. Chances are, a large portion of the male population will look to respond to you.

Now a harder experiment: obtain the student roster of Cairo University and in a randomly chosen class, count the number of names made up of combinations of Ahmed and Mohamed: a large percentage again. Look at the rest: mostly made up of combinations of first names.

or is it biopsychological?

The psychological self arises from the interactions between the neocortex and the older allocortex. The constant interplay between these two systems creates what we perceive as behaviour.