Author Archives: Mahmoud Al-Qudsi

My Thoughts on Sutter’s “C++ and Beyond 2011”

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
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Around a month ago, Herb Sutter gave a talk on why C++ is once more gaining relevance in the world of programming, and how after a decade of neglect and abandonment, it is set to pave the way into the future. I downloaded it a while ago and finally had a chance to watch it last night; the talk itself is most-excellent and is around 40 minutes long, you can stream it online or download it in a higher-resolution format on Channel 9. Or click below to watch:

As someone that’s been using both C/C++ and .NET extensively over the past years, I found there was one very important point that Sutter glanced on, danced around, and did everything short of actually naming in his talk and it’s that if you’re doing anything remotely intricate or complicated, leaky abstractions in managed languages will bite you in the ass, and end up lowering your productivity, some times (and if what you’re working on is truly complicated, often times) to a point where you’d have been more productive using C or C++ in the first place.

The concept of leaky abstractions isn’t anything new and I’m hardly the first to point out how it can turn a knight in shining armor into a harbinger of doom and destruction. It’s the number one problem fundamentally present in almost any framework, but even more so in managed languages where the framework is all you have, and you’re not allowed to side-step it and build your own foundations to work with (p/invoke and interop aside). But lately it’s becoming more and more of a problem as the “push” for innovation that Sutter speaks of has become a fundamental requirement in just about all corners of the industry.

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Google Chrome Form QuickSubmit

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
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As a long time user of Google Chrome (since the very first day of its release, as a matter of fact), I’ve quickly grown accustomed to some of the Chrome way of doing things. Before Google Chrome, I used Opera and before that Firefox and Firebird – and only before those, Internet Explorer.

While each of these fine web browsers has its own way doing things, ranging from keyboard shortcuts to tab management and process handling, they all more or less pull these off a bit nicer than Internet Explorer ever code. But the one Internet Explorer feature I can honestly say I miss when using Google Chrome is the ability to submit the form being currently modified/filled-in with a keyboard shortcut, especially if it works even if there are multiple forms on the screen.

Searching about for a cross-platform solution to this problem, perhaps a previously unknown keyboard shortcut or else some method of assigning a keyboard shortcut that would let Google Chrome intelligently submit the current form via a keyboard shortcut on both Mac and Windows, it became clear that this feature just doesn’t exist for Chrome. Well, as of yesterday, at any rate…

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Microsoft plays the blame game fast and loose with Internet Explorer 10 and Windows 8

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
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Yesterday, Microsoft made available the first public beta of Windows 8. The developer preview can be downloaded on the Microsoft website, and has received plenty of media coverage and has been the subject of much scrutiny and review. However, in our testing of Windows 8 for compatibility with NeoSmart software and products, we came across a rather, shall we say, interesting approach that Internet Explorer 10 now takes to its crashes. With Windows 8, as with previous versions, when an application hangs or crashes, an error reporting dialog is displayed prompting the user to select an action to take with the crashed program.

What’s different with Windows 8 and Internet Explorer 10 is that Microsoft chooses to deflect the blame from itself, and pin it instead on the unfortunate owners of the website that the user had last visited. In the following screenshot, Internet Explorer 10 has crashed after being unable to handle some of the web scripting on our website. Except instead of the error dialog you would expect (something to the effect of “Internet Explorer has stopped responding,” an error caption which we are all familiar with and of which the web is full), the error dialog instead reads:

neosmart.net is not responding.

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Windows Recovery Discs Updated, Reinstated

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
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Download Now

Windows Recovery Disk Screen

Almost four years ago, NeoSmart Technologies published a Windows Vista repair and recovery CD that could be used to treat common boot issues and recover from catastrophic system failure in case you didn’t have a Windows setup CD handy.

Windows XP Logo Over the years, we’ve added more recovery CDs to the collection, ending up with a complete portfolio of repair CDs for Windows Vista and Windows 7 in both 32- and 64-bit flavors. We’ve had the good fortune of being able to host these CDs on our site in one form or the other for free download to millions of users around the globe.

Three months ago, we were contacted by the legal department at Microsoft Corporation asking us to discontinue hosting these files. Until this point, we were not aware that Microsoft was displeased with our hosting of the CDs and in fact enjoyed a rather healthy relationship with the Microsoft support forums where victims of PC crashes would be directed to our site to download a copy of the repair CDs.

Since then, we have been in talks and negotiations with the Microsoft legal and licensing divisions, trying to work out a method whereby we could provide our users and visitors with access to these CDs once again. Today we’re excited to announce that these CDs are once more available for download!

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Irony from Google Plus…

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
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I think we’re on a roll here with picture blogging, but here’s another. This one is from Google+, the newly-launched social network hoping to take a chunk out of Facebook’s dominance in this market.


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TEDx Talk: This is stupid, there has to be a better way!

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
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A copy of my talk at TEDxDeadSea last month is now available on the TEDxTalks channel at YouTube.

The premise is finding new ideas for startups and “entrepreneurships” based on the concept of “this is stupid, there has to be a better way.”

HP Running the ATi QA Show?

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
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ATi's RubyFrom the day I built my PC a few years ago until just last week, it’s been impossible for me to play a game (pretty much *any* full-screen DirectX/OpenGL game) without the ATi drivers crashing. (For reference, stock ATi HD3870 on an ASUS RoG Maximus Formula II motherboard). I’ve tracked down each and every possible lead, and solved a number of crash-inducing issues in the process, but haven’t been able to completely prevent the display driver crashes from the days Vista or now on Windows 7.

There were issues pertaining to dual-displays in a mixed VGA/DVI environment (one display DVI, the second VGA) which were never resolved by ATi (to the best of my knowledge) and were worked around by initially downgrading the DVI to a VGA connection and later replacing the older monitor with a new DVI-based display. There were issues related to the refresh rate. There were issues related to the resolution. There were issues related to the games. There were issues related to the OS. Basically, wherever you look, there were problems caused by poor development practices and crappy QA all around.

There were issues that Microsoft/Windows’ new WDM model caught, triggering a restart of the graphics subsystem without causing a BSoD. And there were (unfortunately the majority) of the ATi display driver crashes that caused BSoDs left, right, and center.

Today, my Windows 7 PC surprised me with an interesting question:

Send info to HP?

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TEDxDeadSea 2011

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
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Just a quick note: TED is coming to Jordan in the form of TEDxDeadSea this Saturday (April 30, 2011), at the Kempinski Hotel in (cue tautology) the Dead Sea, Jordan.

I’ve been honored with the opportunity to speak at this event, and will be discussing my take on entrepreneurship and some of the obstacles of running an international company from the Middle East.

I’m looking forward to all the exciting speakers and performers that will be at TEDxDeadSea and would love to meet anyone interested in engaging in some quality, thought-provoking talk! In the meantime, you can follow me @mqudsi, NeoSmart Technologies at @neosmart, and TEDxDeadSea at @TEDxDeadSea…

Never Buy Domains from 1&1

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
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Never, ever buy domains from 1&1. Why? Let’s just put it this way: if a domain was a physical good that had to be shipped from one end of the USA to the other, or even imported from Europe to the States, it wouldn’t take as long for you to get it as it does when you buy from 1and1.

I’ve bought my fair share of domains via 1and1, and to be honest, on the few times in the past when I’ve needed the domain name ASAP, generally got the domain I bought within 24 hours. But now it’s been 4 days and 1and1 still hasn’t handed over the domain name that I bought and paid for. Instead, the domain shows up in the list of purchases with the status “The domain has been requested” – as if I care! I just want my domain name, and I want it now! The clients are waiting!

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