Civil Disobedience

Civil disobedience is the active refusal to obey a certain amount of laws or commands put by the government. It is formally, a nonviolent resistance or respectful disagreement. Henri David Thoreau's essay in 1849 on "Resistance on civil government" was then renamed "Essay on civil disobedience". By the time his lectures were published, named "Civil Disobedience", four years after his death,in 1866, the term had achieved usage and was taken into consideration.
In order to seek and form of civil disobedience, one must intentionally break certain laws, such as taking a facility illegally. People have expected that they'll be caught and beaten by the authorities. Mahatma Ghandi has outlined certain laws of civil disobedience as he led India to Independence by the British Empire, and those laws were: no anger, never retaliate surrender personal property when confiscated by the authorities but to refuse the property that is held in trust.

Ronald Dworkin stated that there are three forms of civil disobedience:


1.Integrity based civil disobedience, it's when a person disobeys a law that he feels is unethical.
2.Justice based civil disobedience is when a person disobeys laws in order to claim some right that was denied to him.
3. Policy based civil disobedience occurs when a person breaks a law in order to change a policy he/she thinks is wrong.


In Egypt we had a great example of civil disobedience, they said that there will be in 11/2/2012, but nothing happened, everything functioned normally, only a minority had protested. And it was a policy-based civil disobedience, at the end it had no affect on the government or the people.

Qualities Of A Good Friend

First let us define what the meaning of friend is, he or she's your companion, we can even say your soulmate, he completes your life, because without friends, you're nothing; you need them as much as they need you. Now, we have to know how to pick our good friends. A good friend has to be honest, that doesn't necessarily share with you every second of his life, but the relation between you two has to be smooth and comfortable, not so formal. A good friend is unique, interesting, and this is probably the first reason you became friends with him in the first place, because you have a lot of common interests. A good friend always has to be adaptable, to figure out weather you are sad or happy or excited, and if he annoys you, tries to find a way to stop it. He also has to support your goals, a good friend will know what you want most out of this life. Always listen to your friend before talking, put him before yourself. And when he does something wrong, hate the act, not the friend, don't judge him cruelly. Of course, a good friend has to be someone you can always trust and count on. Be loyal to your friend, show that you support him and respect his ideas and beliefs, and always be a giver, not a taker, because when you give, you always gain something in return, and that something would be the love of your friends.

A great innovator

As you saw in the background image, my role model is Steve Jobs, who died 4 months ago. In his 56 years, he changed the world, our way of thinking, he had a vision of the world that no one ever had. Everything he invents has to be expedient. In 1971, Steve Jobs met Steve Wozniak and they invented the Apple I that had no mouse, which they did in Steve's parents' garage to sell it. Jobs was the first to see the Xerox commercial which had a mouse driven graphical user interface. It then led to the creation of the Apple Lisa. One year later, an Apple employee invented the Macintosh. In 1985, after leaving Apple, Steve founded NeXT Computers. He was then running out of money but it attracted the attention Ross Perot who invested in this invention. In 1996, Apple bought NeXT for $429 million which bought jobs back to the company he co-founded. 

This purchase led to the invention of the first Mac OS X. Steve jobs resigned as CEO in August 2011, and became chairman of the board. I chose him to be my role model because he didn't give up when he left Apple, he came back and continued on, he also had a great vision of the future. 

That is the reason that his death was really tragic to the world, because we knew that we lost a great innovator, but although he left this world, his hard work will remain forever.

Steve Jobs 1955-2011

What is SOPA

I am extremely happy that we are doing this post, it's a way of knowing what's happening all over the world at the moment. Especially that it concerns many of us, as it concerns the internet and a way to fight online trafficking in copyrighted materiel, in way or another, it's legalizing the internet, no more taking what's not rightfully ours. But don't tell me you never downloaded a song or a movie from the internet, well, this bill is what it's all about, it's here to stop all this. SOPA stands for Stopping Online Piracy Acts, it was a U.S bill introduced by Lamar Smith. Its main goal was to protect the theoretical property of its creators and to give the profits won from American innovations to its innovators. Let's take an example on jailbreak, jail breaking let's you get the paid apps on the App Store for free, that way, the developers that made those apps will not win, and their effort would be useless because everyone-in a symbolical way- stole the app. Personally I'm happy that jail breaking will end, because I was worried that people would go buy the app for free knowing that I made the effort to put, and the developers pay in order to publish it on the App Store. The impact that SOPA will do on web-browsing software is really clear. In a specified case, the web browser "Firefox", it has an extension called MAFIAAFire Redirector, that would redirect users to another location with domains that were banned from the U.S government. Then in May 2011, Mozilla were asked to remove this extension questioning whether this was illegal or not. A lot of companies support this bill, because they feel that they have a chance to gain their rights and not getting robbed. Me, I think it's a great act and I hope it works and stays this way.

A Turning Point

Everyone should deserve a chance to change themselves, I say New Year is the best moment to do that. It is a turning point to your personality, to all the acts you've made, good and bad. And if you don't change yourself, you can start at the beginning of the month, you can even start next week, there's no disparity, no one will judge you, you're the one to judge yourself. This year, you should start fresh, a whole new year with no one stop you from accomplishing your dreams you were incapable of reaching or achieving, it's a top priority for you to think out your acts and improve, and if you have nothing to improve, then try to positively change your friends. New Year's Resolution doesn't have to concern yourself, someone might even improve better than me by just reading this post I'm writing, how ironic is that.

Everyone has negative sides, no one is always positive and perfect, to the point that he doesn't need this assignment. He just has to look harder to find his negative sides, even if it turns out to be only one, he could fix it and wonder, what should he do next, he put a goal this year to fix this mistake, should he then leave and never try to change anything else. No, he should improve more, there are no limits in changing yourself, you just have to look!

So, what will you improve this year, your ethics in class, at home, with your friends. Or is it in sports. Anything you change is a resolution, even the tiniest thing that you change at first, could a huge part of your life in five to ten years. So I decided that 2012 should be my turning point, and this can give you the opportunity to change yourself and the people around you, don't just neglect and leave behind this great opportunity, a great chance for change. My turning point will be 2012, what will be yours?