After enjoying more than half a millennium of existence in Heaven (about seven-hundred years, by his own count), Nasreddin Hodja came to Allah, complaining:
"Dear God, forgiving and merciful, please do something to Earth, so that more people would end up here. Without newcomers from down there, existence in Heaven is becoming, well, boring. I would suggest to bring more justice and laughs to the people of Earth."
Allah contemplated Nasreddin's advice for a brief moment, then answered smilingly:
"You are quite right, Molla Nasreddin. I shall load your donkey with a hefty luggage of justice and laughs and send it down to Earth."
In less than a blink of an eye, Nasreddin Hodja found himself riding his donkey along a dusty gravel road on Earth.

After working some time for the TV, Rashid invited Nasreddin Hodja to the TV studio. He thus explained Nasreddin the workings of the TV:
"See, every family has a TV at home and they watch it every day for several hours. They believe whatever the TV says. It just becomes true"

"No way," exclaimed Nasreddin in disbelief. "I can surely make something up that is so unbelievable that people will not believe it, no matter how I tell it to them. I do believe that people are smarter than believing a fool like myself and I speak from experience here."

"Come and try." challenged him Rashid.

A few days later, Rashid visited Nasreddin Hodja with a TV crew. He announced him as a sage who has lived through many calamities and has something important to say to his people. Then he asked the cameraman to turn the camera to Hodja and with a wink told him: "Your turn, Hodja."

"A new disease originating from those unclean pigs is decimating the population. Unless you put a cloth in front of your nose and mouth, as well as those of your children, you are risking your life and the life of your children." announced Nasreddin Hodja.

In two days, Rashid and Hodja met in a chaihana (tea-house), both wearing masks. "I trust the wisdom of the people," said Nasreddin, "after all, if so many people wear the masks, there must be something to it, right?"

Q: How's "neighborhood" in Russian?
A: Махалля.

From klarinia via exorcia

The other day, Nasreddin Hodja was haggling over SSL certification prices with a consultant, Tair Salimbekov.

— "Well, the most trusted and most respected CA out there is Verisign. You surely want to make your server as secure as possible, don't you?" pitched Tair.
— "It will only cost me one thousand bucks per year, but I can pay another five hundred, to turn my clients' address bar green, right?" enthused Hodja.
— "That's right." answered Tair, "It will make both eavesdropping and man-in-the-middle attacks on your server infeasible."
— "But, see, Thawte offers the same for half the price." pointed out Nasreddin Hodja. "And from StartCom, I can get a recognized SSL certificate for free."
— "Oh, but a free certificate is almost like a self-signed snakeoil solution: you don't get a warranty with it and, of course, the certification criteria are so loose that they are very easy to circumvent for a dedicated attacker." continued Tair. "Moreover, StartCom certificates are not even recognized by some of the most popular web browsers like IE8. Do you want to turn down all those clients?"
— "Well," replied Nasreddin, "of course I don't. But then we are not talking about security, anymore, are we?"
— "Every text on information security would tell you the importance of third-party certification of the public key. The browser merely protects its users from a very real threat by informing them that the site they are about to visit is not secure." continued Tair.
— "Have you tried https://verisign.com ?" asked Nasreddin.
— "Oh, but come on, you know that this is just because of a known flaw in https. Try https://www.verisign.com instead." replied Tair.
— "How many other flaws are there?" asked Nasreddin Hodja, "And while we are at it, it says that it is super-duper-dark-green-certified by Verisign.Inc. It is nothing more than a self-signed certificate with no third-party certification. Why should I trust them?"
— "Because your clients do, Hodja, that's why." said Tair Salimbekov bluntly.
— "Let's get it from Thawte, then." agreed Nasreddin Hodja. "That's Google's choice, too, after all."
— "Okay, let us do it the Google way, then! If they aren't worried about the security implications, neither am I." picked up the consultant.
— "By the way, do you know what Google uses for accessing the administrative console of their servers?" asked Nasreddin.
— "SSH, I guess." offered Tair.
— "And who certifies those public keys?" asked Nasreddin Hodja.

P.S. This post is dedicated to OpenSSH, which is 10 years old today. Excellent protocol design and implementation make it the best and most important cryptographic security tool out there.

PS2: The trademarks in this story are owned by their respective owners: Verisign Inc., Thawte Inc., StartCom Ltd. and Google Inc.

Happy Rosh Hashanah to all Jews, happy Eid al-Fitr to all Muslims!

What makes this patriotic song about Kazakhstan (the real one, not Borat-land) by JCS quite interesting is that instead of priding himself of being the successor of great warriors, the singer's source of pride is his own accomplishment of returning home from a long, profitable journey to distant places with various riches and, most important of them all: experience to share.
In the video, a beautiful land impressing and a friendly people welcoming a foreign traveler is shown. Not one leading a caravan of camels, but one driving a modern commercial truck, following in the footsteps of ancestors not in appearance but in essence and spirit. As the truck travels through Kazakhstan, we see the Subcontinental trader doing business, trading favors or just exchanging warm greetings with all sorts of people and enterprises: small and big, traditional and ultra-modern.



( What the song itself is about? )

As a foreigner, after listening to this song, I feel like traveling to Kazakhstan, doing business there and enriching both that wonderful country and myself. The children of Kazakhstan will also learn all the right lessons from songs like this. This is the way to love one's country!

Are there song like this about your country? Please share!

"אַ שפּראַך איז אַ דיאַלעקט מיט אַן אַרמיי און פֿלאָט"
"A language is a dialect with an army and navy"
-- Max Weinreich, XX^th century linguist

The one and only Uzbek restaurant in Budapest is closed, that is for sure.
On its website, it says that it is closed for technical reasons.

An inn called "Villa Rosa" shares the address with the restaurant, so Doniyor Kattayev called them. He was told that the restaurant was closed upon "orders from above", will definitely not reopen before September and is very probably closed for good. Since "Bukhara" was always packed with patrons and regularly received positive reviews in restaurant guides, he asked his friend, Nasreddin Hodja what those "orders from above" might be?

"That must be Allah's will," replied Nasreddin Hodja.

This blog wishes Mr. Auromjon Usmanov, the chef of "Bukhara", great success in all his endeavors!

In order to earn some money, Nasreddin Hodja took up a construction job in far-away Minsk.

He encountered the following poster on the wall:

Dear migrant worker gentlemen,

The residents of this building kindly ask you to abstain from wall-art, leastwise for the fact that this avenue of self-expression was characteristic of bronze-age people and has since somewhat lost its importance and currency.

Thank you for your understanding!

"What is good for General Motors is good for America."
-- Charlie Wilson, CEO of General Motors Corp., 1955

Footnote:
Today, GM declared bankruptcy.

By sirmapur

The answer is 42.

1. Remotely configuring the only network interface of a web server.
2. Doing a WiFi router's firmware upgrade over WiFi.
3. Remote kernel upgrade.

Anything similar in your experience?

Instead of a copyright notice or a license, Nasreddin Hodja found the following blessing for the source code of SQLite database:

May you do good and not evil
May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others
May you share freely, never taking more than you give.

As Nasreddin Hodja was eating a chicken leg, a beggar asked Hodja to give it to him.
"It is not mine to give," said Nasreddin, "it is owned by my wife."
"But you are eating it!" protested the beggar.
"Well, that's what my wife told me to do with it." replied Nasreddin.

Hodja took up the duties of a molla in a small village. During a drought, people asked him to pray that Allah send some rain for the crops. Hodja prayed dutifully, but the rain failed to materialize. After a while, people started grumbling that the new molla's prayers do not reach the Heavens.
"My prayers reach the Heavens for sure," protested Nasreddin Hodja. "they just seem to have encoding problems up there."

Paraphrased from here.

May your stationary satellites recover from the blackout without a glitch, may your receivers remain unharmed by direct sunlight, may your days be longer and brighter!

Happy Navrouz, everybody!

"Despite what the media might tell you, Jews and Muslims can and do live together in peace", said Nasreddin Hodja to his friend, Doniyor Kattaev. "I have seen it with my very own eyes! When I visited Prophet Daniel's tomb in Samarqand, I have seen two elderly men, a devout Muslim and an equally devout Jew, praying together in the mausoleum. From catching a few words of their conversation afterwards, I concluded that they were very close friends and had been for a very long time."

"And what is it that made them very close friends?" — asked Doniyor.

"Well, two things." — replied Nasreddin — "Obviously, their deep belief in God. But also the thirty years spent together in the ranks of the Communist Party of Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic."