seputar takabur

”Sesungguhnya Kami telah menciptakan kamu (Adam), lalu Kami bentuk tubuhmu, kemudian Kami katakan kepada para malaikat, ‘Bersujudlah kamu kepada Adam’, maka mereka pun bersujud kecuali iblis. Dia tidak termasuk mereka yang bersujud. Allah berfirman, ‘Apakah yang menghalangimu untuk bersujud (kepada Adam) di waktu Aku menyuruhmu?’ Menjawab iblis, ‘Saya lebih baik daripadanya: Engkau ciptakan saya dari api sedangkan dia Engkau ciptakan dari tanah’. (Allah) berfirman: ”Maka turunlah kamu darinya (surga); karena kamu tidak sepatutnya menyombongkan/takabur  diri di dalamnya. Keluarlah! Sesungguhnya kamu termasuk mahluk yang hina” (QS 7: 11 – 12).

Sembahlah Allah dan janganlah kamu mempersekutukan-Nya dengan sesuatu apapun. Dan berbuat baiklah pada kedua ibu bapak, karib kerabat, anak yatim, orang miskin, tetangga dekat dan tetangga jauh, teman sejawat, ibnu sabil, dan hamba sahayamu. Sesungguhnya Allah tidak menyukai orang-orang sombong lagi membanggakan diri. (QS An-Nisa’: 36)

Ibnu Mas’ud menceritakan bahwasanya Rasulullah SAW bersabda, ”Jauhilah olehmu sifat takabur, sebab karena terdorong oleh rasa takabur inilah, maka iblis tidak mau bersujud kepada Adam. Dan, jauhilah sifat rakus, sebab karena itulah sehingga Adam mau memakan buah pohon terlarang. Dan, jauhilah sifat dengki, sebab kedua anak Adam itu seseorang di antara mereka membunuh saudaranya karena terdorong oleh rasa dengki. Semua sifat itu adalah pangkal segala dosa.” (HR Ibnu ‘Asakir).

Takabur adalah sifat atau perbuatan buruk yang paling dibenci Allah SWT selain perbuatan menyekutukan-Nya. Ada kesamaan diantara kedua-nya yaitu menganggap ada kekuatan di luar-Nya yang dapat dijadikan sebagai sumber kekuatan dan kebanggaan.

— itu bagian dari kutbah sholat jum’at saya hari ini di Mesjid UI, Depok, bahan merupakan kutipan dengan sedikit revisi dari beberapa sumber. Maklumlah saya bukan  Da’i profesional. Lengkap teks kutbahnya bisa dilihat di sini.

Scientists Put Interactive Flu Tracking at Public’s Fingertips

OSU News (11/12/09) Caldwell, Emily

Ohio State University (OSU) researchers have combined several computer systems to analyze massive amounts of genetic data collected from publicly available isolated strains of the H5N1 virus, the cause of the avian flu.  The researchers then developed a Web-based application using Google Earth that enables health officials and the public to visualize how the virus moved around the world.  The researchers say the visualizations are the most comprehensive map of how the avian flu has been transmitted among sites in Asia, Africa, and Europe.  To create the visualizations, the researchers developed a new method for analyzing genetic data that generates more complete information about the flu’s spread.  The method, combined with the growing availability of sequenced genomes of isolated flu strains, is expected to help public health officials make better-informed predictions about how the H1N1 flu will evolve.  ”We are taking into account more data but at the same time, we’re making simpler visualizations, allowing users to choose what they want to see,” says OSU professor Daniel Janies.  ”We waded through all of the complexities so people in the public health realm who want to determine how a flu virus got from point A to point B can find that out, and we’ll have better public health outcomes as a result.”
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/fluspread.htm

Facebook Offers Poor Personal Data Protection

Facebook Offers Poor Personal Data Protection
SINTEF (11/17/09)

A study of Norwegian Internet users and social media found that people are willing to post their personal information on social media sites even when they are not aware how it will be used.  Conducted by SINTEF for the Norwegian Consumers’ Council, the researchers found that 60 percent of Norweigan Internet users are on Facebook.  SINTEF’s Petter Bae Brandtzaeg and Marika Luders conclude that Facebook offers relatively poor personal data protection due to the service itself, its design, the level of competence of its users, and their lack of awareness of how to protect themselves.  ”Facebook has become an important arena for social participation in our personal environment,” Brandtzaeg says.  ”However, it is becoming ever more easy to gather and aggregate personal information, outside the control of users.”  Still, people are willing to post their personal information because so many other people use Facebook, and they rarely hear of unfortunate incidents.  Respondents were usually not aware that Facebook uses personal information for commercial purposes, and their personal information also can be used against them, such as when they apply for a job.  The researchers say that people and objects will be woven together ever more closely by the next wave of Internet media such as Google Wave and mobile smartphones.  ”This can make us even more vulnerable to failures of personal data protection,” Luders says.
http://www.sintef.no/Home/Press-Room/Research-News/Facebook-offers-poor-personal-data-protection-/

3D Web Will Save High-Performance Computing Industry

Network World (11/17/09) Brodkin, Jon

Intel chief technology officer Justin Rattner believes that three-dimensional (3D) Web technologies will revive the high-performance computing (HPC) industry.  Rattner, who delivered the opening address at the SC09 supercomputing conference, said HPC demand is currently limited to small markets.  However, he said virtually the entire population could benefit from HPC if the right platform became available.  ”High-performance computing doesn’t need a killer app as much as it needs a killer application framework,” Rattner said.  ”It needs a platform in which people can leverage the power of high-performance computing to do just about anything they can imagine.”  Rattner believes the killer application framework is the 3D Web, powered on the back end by cloud technologies and the HPC industry.  The 3D Web will power virtual worlds and create new ways for people to interact, as well as new platforms for businesses to test products.  Guest speaker Aaron Duffy, a biology researcher at Utah State University, said he is using 3D simulations to study how environmental conditions affect fern populations over several generations.  Fashion Research Institute CEO Shenlei Winkley, another guest speaker, said 3D modeling and simulation programs have reduced design times by 75 percent and sample costs by 65 percent.  ”This is the killer application infrastructure platform that will power growth and increase [research and development] capability in high-performance computing,” Rattner said.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/111709-intel-3d-web.html

There’s No Business Like Grid Business

ICT Results (11/16/09)

The European Union-funded GRid enabled access to rich mEDIA (GREDIA) content project has developed a platform that makes the grid’s resources available to business users.  ”Many business applications need to work fast and need to work with huge amounts of data,” says GREDIA coordinator Nikos Sarris.  ”The grid is ideal for that, but software developers don’t use it because they don’t know how.”  Sarris says the GREDIA platform will help business application developers exploit the grid without requiring them to become grid technology experts.  He says the system is reliable because it is distributed across numerous machines, and it optimizes business transactions using algorithms that make the most of the grid’s distributed resources.  The project developed and demonstrated two business services: one allows any number of sources using almost any kind of device to be used as a news-gathering team; a second is designed for the banking industry.  The banking applications enable lenders to use their home computers or handheld devices to securely provide information.  The program authenticates information, combines it into a profile, and calculates credit rankings using a protocol specified by the lender.
http://cordis.europa.eu/ictresults/index.cfm?section=news&tpl=article&BrowsingType=Features&ID=91001

What Kind of Cloud Computing Project Would You Build With $32M?

Network World (10/14/09) Cooney, Michael

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) plans to build a large cloud computing test bed in an effort to determine whether cloud computing can help meet scientists’ demand for computing resources.  Approximately $32 million will be spent on the Magellan project, which will combine the commercial cloud offerings of Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.  The project also will link the 100Gbps Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) to the Argonne National and Lawrence Berkeley National laboratories to rapidly transfer data between geographically dispersed clouds.  ESnet will enable DOE scientists to access the computing resources regardless of their location.  As DOE scientists use the Magellan system for their computations, performance-monitoring software will be used to analyze the kinds of science applications being run on the system and how well they perform on a cloud.  The researchers say the project will help provide a better understanding of cloud computing’s potential as a cost-effective and energy-efficient tool for scientific discovery.  ”We know that the model works well for business applications, and we are working to make it equally effective for science,” says Argonne’s Pete Beckman.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/101409-layer8-cloud-computing-doe.html

Why Desktop Multiprocessing Has Speed Limits

Computerworld (10/05/09) Vol. 43, No. 30, P. 24; Wood, Lamont

Despite the mainstreaming of multicore processors for desktops, not every desktop application can be rewritten for multicore frameworks, which means some bottlenecks will persist.  ”If you have a task that cannot be parallelized and you are currently on a plateau of performance in a single-processor environment, you will not see that task getting significantly faster in the future,” says analyst Tom Halfhill.  Adobe Systems’ Russell Williams points out that performance does not scale linearly even with parallelization on account of memory bandwidth issues and delays dictated by interprocessor communications.  Analyst Jim Turley says that, overall, consumer operating systems “don’t do anything smart” with multicore architecture.  ”We have to reinvent computing, and get away from the fundamental premises we inherited from von Neumann,” says Microsoft technical fellow Burton Smith.  ”He assumed one instruction would be executed at a time, and we are no longer even maintaining the appearance of one instruction at a time.”  Analyst Rob Enderle notes that most applications will operate on only a single core, which means that the benefits of a multicore architecture only come when multiple applications are run.  ”What we’d all like is a magic compiler that takes yesterday’s source code and spreads it across multiple cores, and that is just not happening,” says Turley.  Despite the performance issues, vendors prefer multicore processors because they can facilitate a higher level of power efficiency.  ”Using multiple cores will let us get more performance while staying within the power envelope,” says Acer’s Glenn Jystad.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/342870/The_Desktop_Traffic_Jam?intsrc=print_latest

Mobile Apps Give Students Instant Access to Information

Columbus State University News (09/24/09)

Columbus State University (CSU) has given its students access to the Google Apps Education Edition through their mobile phones, using on-campus Gmail, calendars, and other programs.  CSU says it is the first university to provide its students with so many mobile applications.  Students can use mobile phones with Web access to look up their academic status, class and on-campus bus schedules, financial aid and personal account information, student events, and a map of campus.  The mobile applications are so popular that students recently voted to increase technology fees to get the best service available.  ”Our ultimate goal is to duplicate all of the services that we now provide to students through our university portal,” says CSU’s Robert Diveley.  Diveley will write about the development of these applications on the Google Enterprise Blog as its weeklong guest writer.  He also will give a joint lecture with CSU chief information officer Abraham George on the same topic at the national Educause conference.
http://www.colstate.edu/news/viewnews.asp?ItemNum=1220

suatu contoh kolaborasi yang baik – BIN

Kalau kita lihat di berbagai belahan dunia termasuk di Indonesia, konon terjadi persaingan di antara perguruan tinggi untuk mencapai taraf lebih baik, lebih populer dan lebih xxx. Namun pada hal tertentu, kerjasama merupakan sesuatu yang juga tidak kalah baiknya untuk mencapai hal yang lebih baik dan lebih bermanfaat bagi masyarakat luas. Salah satu contoh di lakukan oleh perguruan tinggi di Canada dalam riset BIN. Dan bukan berarti perguruan tinggi di Indonesia dan industrinya tidak mampu melakukan kerjasama yang baik untuk mendapatkan manfaat bersama dan luas. Awalnya — mungkin — dengan niat dan inisiatif mengajak kolaborasi. Wallahu ‘alam, God knows well, wasalam

lafadz ringan namun bermakna

saya dapat link berikut yang mengulas arti kata kata yang pendek dan mudah diucapkan (seperti bismillah, insya Allah, masya Allah dsb) namun bermakna dan manfaat besar. Mudah mudahan bermanfaat bagi yang memerlukan dan mempraktekannya.

http://muslimah.or.id/fikih/lafadz-lafadz-yang-ringan-di-lidah.html