Mohammed Alani

How to export Gantt chart from MS-Project 2010

Posted on June 2, 2014 by Course Information and Resources

I am not a “MS-Project” expert of any kind. Its just that a lot of my students need this, so I thought I would put it on the web for them as well as anyone else. Without wasting more time, here are the steps:

1. Mark all the rows in the WBS in MS-Project by clicking on the numbers on the side and sliding the pointer to the last row of project tasks.

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2. Click on the small arrow next to “Copy” in the toolbar.

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3. Click on “Copy Picture” from the small drop-down menu.

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4. In the new window that is shown do the following:

a. Select “To GIF image file”

b. Select the location and the file name

c. Select “Selected Rows”

d. Select the proper dates for the start and end of your project. It is very important to select the correct dates that are used in the list or your Gantt Chart would not be complete.

e. Click on “OK”.

The file is now saved and can be easily added to your Word document.

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Paper: Securing the Cloud against Distributed Denial of Service Attacks: A Review

Posted on April 29, 2014 by Publications

ABSTRACT

Distributed denial of service attacks are becoming a serious threat that no business involved in providing services over the Internet can ignore. The rapidly growing frequency and magnitude in which these attacks are occurring is an alarming indicator. As cloud services are being adopted by many enterprises, the cloud infrastructure resilience to such attacks becomes a growing concern. In this paper, we discuss the types and possible impacts of DDoS attacks on cloud computing and the suggested mitigation techniques. These attacks were categorized into three categories; external, internal, and cloud-to-outside attacks.

 

Published in the Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Applied Information and Communication Technology, Muscat, Oman. 28-29 April, 2014.

Book: Guide to OSI and TCP/IP Models

Posted on March 11, 2014 by Publications
  • Provides a simplified introduction to computer networks
  • Requires no prior background in the field
  • Discusses the fundamentals of the network, transport and application layers
This work opens with an accessible introduction to computer networks, providing general definitions of commonly used terms in networking. This is followed by a detailed description of the OSI model, including the concepts of connection-oriented and connectionless communications. The text carefully elaborates the specific functions of each layer, along with what is expected of protocols operating at each layer. Next, the journey of a single packet, from source to destination, is described in detail. The final chapter is devoted to the TCP/IP model, beginning with a discussion of IP protocols and the supporting ARP, RARP, and InARP protocols. The work also discusses the TCP and UDP protocols operating at the transport layer, and the application layer protocols HTTP, DNS, FTP, TFTP, SMTP, POP3, and Telnet. Important facts and definitions are highlighted in gray boxes found throughout the text.
Published: March, 2014 by Springer.
Guide to OSI and TCP/IP Model

Guide to OSI and TCP/IP Model

Develop research culture in the Arab Middle East

Posted on March 4, 2014 by My Rants

I wrote a letter to the Editor of the Communications of the ACM that was published in Issue 3/Vol 57 (March, 2014).

It was only 2002 when I first knew ACM even existed. I was preparing my master’s thesis in computer engineering in Iraq. I was so amazed I thought of ACM members as movie stars. Due to many circumstances, I did not have the honor of joining as a member until 2010. Having received my bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D. in the Middle East, I have always seen a gap, a large one, between the way research is conducted there on one side and in Europe and the U.S. on the other. This feeling has been enforced whenever I get a rejection letter for a paper sent to a big computer science conference or journal. Sometimes, unfortunately, reviewers have mocked and even ridiculed instead of provided a constructive review. This happened in the early stages of my own research, and, as I learned later, to many of my colleagues as well. In most cases, when I look at Arab scientists who have published in reputable conferences and journals, I see author names of those who have either studied abroad or are working abroad, many very successful with outstanding research records. What does this say?

The Arab Middle East needs a cultural revolution in terms of research, especially in computer science. The research mentality here is quite different from other areas of the world. This is not to say it is not scientifically valid, just that research here is conducted in a different way that needs to be formalized to conform to international standards. Many researchers in the Arab world have amazing potential. Unfortunately, that potential is not being unleashed until they go abroad.

I sincerely hope ACM takes the initiative in helping spread a valid and concrete academic research culture in the Arab world. We all aim for the same thing—improving the quality of life for ourselves and for the coming generations. The lack of tools and research culture should not prevent Arab computer scientists from contributing to the development of all humanity.

The letter can be found in here.

All feedback is welcomed.

Paper: Mathematical Approximation of Delay in Voice over IP

Posted on January 6, 2014 by Publications 0

ABSTRACT

This paper introduces a novel method of approximate calculation of delay in voice over IP systems. The proposed method relies on mathematical operations like interpolation and integration to produce a continuous function. This continuous function shows the delay in different times. The paper shows a detailed example of applying this method successfully to a sample call. The resulting delay function can help in better understanding of the variations of delay in different times and how it is affected by network load.

Download

Citation Information:

Mohammed M. Alani, Mathematical Approximation of Delay in Voice over IP, International Journal of Computer and Information Technology (IJCIT), ISSN: 2279-0764, Vol. 3, Issue 1, pp. 78-82, January 2014.

How to Limit the Input of a Textbox of Windows Phone

Posted on January 6, 2013 by WP7 0

Some time ago I have written about the keycode glitch. Other than this glitch, sometimes you might need to limit the scope of input to certain set of characters.Changing the inputscope of the keyboard helps alot. But, sometimes you need more specific filters. For example, if you’re expecting an all-numbers input and you use the “TelephoneNumber” keyboard, you’ll still be able to get “.” or other symbols. Another example is if you need to get an email address input which you would prefer to have in small letters.

Anyway, let’s get to the code. The code is simply one line. Lets assume that you have textbox name txtInput. You’ll just have to add the following code in the event handler of “KeyDown” for the txtInput control.

[crayon lang=”vb”]If “0123456789”.IndexOf(e.Key.ToString) = -1 Then e.Handled=True[/crayon]

This line limits the input of the textbox to the numbers 0 to 9. You can change the content between the qoutations into any range of acceptable input characters that you need.

I hope this helps.

App: Saudi Calendar

Posted on December 15, 2012 by Apps 8

App Link in WP Store

لقد توقفت عن العمل ببرامج ويندوز فون – هذا التطبيق لم يعد متوفرا

I have stopped developing for Windows Phone – This app is no longer available

التقويم السعودي هو تطبيق لنظام ويندوز فون لعرض التقويم الهجري و القيام بالتحويل بين التواريخ الهجرية و الميلادية. يستخدم هذا التطبيق تقويم أم القرى للتحويل وهو التقويم الرسمي في المملكة العربية السعودية.

خصائص التطبيق

الواجهة المبسطة و المتوفرة باللغة العربية و الإنكليزية
إمكانية عرض تأريخ اليوم الهجري على شاشة القفل (إبتداءا من الإصدار الثاني)
خاصية الأيقونات الحية (لايف تايل) بالأحجام الثلاثة (إبتداءا من الإصدار الثاني)
خاصية عرض التقويمين الهجري و الميلادي بشكل متداخل لسهولة العرض
يوفر خاصية تحويل التواريخ الهجري إلى الميلادي و بالعكس
يوفر خاصية اللايف تايل ليقوم بعرض تأريخ اليوم على سطح المكتب
نطاق التحويل يبدأ من يوم الأول من شهر محرم سنة واحد هجرية ويمتد بشكل غير محدود

إمكانية التغيير اليدوي للتأريخ الهجري بزيادة و نقصان يومين.
و المزيد في الإصدارات القادمة إن شاء الله.

ملاحظة: التطبيق يستخدم تقويم أم القرى للسنوات الهجرية 1350-1500 و خارج هذا النطاق يتبنى التطبيق طريقة التحويل المستخدمة في مركز الدراسات الشرقية في جامعة زيورخ بسويسرا.

إذا كانت لديكم أي ملاحظات أو مقترحات، يرجى كتابتها هنا بشكل تعليق و سأقوم بالرد عليها في أقرب فرصة ممكنة.

Saudi Calendar is a Windows Phone application that displays Hijri calendar and performs Hijri-Gregorian date conversion using Hijrical.org online conversion service. This service uses Um-Alqura calendar for calculation which is the official calendar in Saudi Arabia.

The app has the following features:

  • easy it use interface with Arabic and English interface.
  • Ability to manually shift Hijri date ±2 days
  • support of showing todays hijri date on lockscreen.
  • support of all three sizes of live tiles.
  • Mixed calendar showing Hijri and Gregorian dates.
  • provides any-date Hijri-to-Gregorian and Gregorian to Hijri conversion
  • provides a live tile that is automatically updated to show today’s hijri date simply there on your phone’s desktop.
  • the conversion range starts from Muharram 1st, 1 Hijri and has no limit.
  • more features to come in the future.

Note: The app uses Um-Alqura Calendar for the Hijri years 1350-1500. Out of that range a mathematical conversion method used by the center of oriental studies in Zurich University was adopted.

 

Changlog:

  • v2.1 (July 16th, 2013)
  • Addign the ability to manually shift Hijri dates ±2 days.
  • v2.0 (Mar. 5th, 2013)
  • A completely re-written user interface.
  • The conversions and calendar calculations are done locally now so there is no need for Internet connection.
  • Support for showing today’s hijri date on the lockscreen.
  • Support for all three sizes of live tiles.
  • v1.1 (Jan. 3rd, 2013)
  • minor bug fixes
  • v1.0:  ( Dec 28th, 2012)
  • First Release

 

Privacy policy: By using versions 1 and 1.1 of this app, you are agreeing to the terms of use and privacy policy of Hijrical.org. Starting from version 2 there are no user data being collected whatsoever. All correspondence between app users and the developer are not to be disclosed to anyone else.

App store link:

http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/saudi-calendar/9467aa14-9c13-4674-b3cc-8e8804512beb

 

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