vlado's blog

php closures and lambda functions rfc

vlado — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 06:45:44 -0400

There is a discussion going on in php land about introducing closures and lambda functions, there was even a discussion on haskell-cafe about it (chx strikes again ;). About time, I would say. Having this functionality is a bonus. Having it implemented badly or half-arsed is going to do more damage than help. This is a short summary of what do I understand from the rfc and what do I think about it.

Why this came into my sight after eurovision?

vlado — Sun, 25 May 2008 04:58:26 -0400

thanks slashdot, reddit, youtube for starting me this morning

Talks Yochai Benkler: Open-source economics

vlado — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 12:38:27 -0400

from TedTalks

Law professor Yochai Benkler explains how collaborative projects like Wikipedia and Linux represent the next stage of human organization. By disrupting traditional economic production, copyright law and established competition, they're paving the way for a new set of economic laws, where empowered individuals are put on a level playing field with industry giants.

mailman, mailman, whois hailing from at?

vlado — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 06:49:53 -0500

#! /bin/bash
#member_match
LISTS=`list_lists | cut -f1 -d- | xargs echo`
for list in $LISTS ; do
  echo $list
  list_members $list | grep $1
done

cow:~# ./member_match "at$"

He Sells Shell Scripts Not Just to Intersect Sets

vlado — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 06:42:37 -0500

He Sells Shell Scripts to Intersect Sets is a good read. Set and multiset operations from the command line or in .sh. Rather clean, straightforward shell magic.

To read

vlado — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 06:17:29 -0500

On The Constitutional Reasons Behind Copyright And Patents
Patents, Copyrights And Trademarks, Oh My!
If Intellectual Property Is Neither Intellectual, Nor Property, What Is It?

Against Intellectual Monopoly

I liked Levine and Bolrin's Intellectual Monopoly substitute term for IP. It better reflect what "intellectual property" is about - a monopoly to exploit a "product" of someone's intellect, granted by a government explicitly , for example patents, or implicitly (copyright).

while(!asleep()) sheep++;

vlado — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 10:46:45 -0500

from qdb

<piercings> A programmer started to cuss
<piercings> Because getting to sleep was a fuss
<piercings> As he lay there in bed
<piercings> Looping 'round in his head
<piercings> was: while(!asleep()) sheep++;

who is failure?

vlado — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 04:34:08 -0500

So who is failure?
Ask google to find out

wikileaks

vlado — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 16:52:07 -0500

Wikileaks

no title required

vlado — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 12:04:10 -0500

Arms? Million Faces? DSEi? What's that got in common?

vlado — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 11:49:40 -0500

Amnesty, IANSA and Oxfam have launched a global campaign aiming to stop gun running and control the arms trade - and they need your support now. Simply register your support. Some causes are worth it, and I reckon this is one of them. Regardless whether you think you can make a difference , it costs you nothing to try.

I've already signed up and you can see my ugly mugshot in the Million Faces petition.

Armed violence wrecks lives by fuelling conflict, poverty, and human rights abuses. The campaign is calling for an international Arms Trade Treaty which will make it harder for arms to get into the wrong hands.

Act now

Or even better do something extra.

There once was a sysadmin, Eddie.....

vlado — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 10:01:37 -0500

There once was a sysadmin, Eddie,
Who could strip, touch and finger real steady.
But when it came to the mount,
(From his sweetheart's account),
It was always "Device is not ready".

from limerickdb via reddit

Lies, truths, misconceptions and hypocrits - a free desktop rant

vlado — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 06:12:44 -0500

Ok, ok - it is a worn out subject. The free desktop (or as otherwise known open source software desktop) story is making rounds in the blogs and establishment news again. The arguments in the comments end up revolving around ether of the the following

If open source/linux were so much better why everyone is not using it?

Oh, it hurts. Excuse me for repeating - because ms windows comes installed on your computer and everyone "knows a guy" who can lend a copy of their favourite software. Or you could download it from a warez source. I could actually argue that software piracy is very good for Microsoft's coffers. Not so much for Adobe and friends. But I digress. Since you already have a working thing installed on your box, you would just use it. That is fair and square. Unless you are an enthusiast. But how many people just want to get on with it and how many want to tinker? How many proud shed owners do DYI in there and how many just escape from the missus? Sorry, I did it again. Have you tried to get a naked PC or laptop? Preinstalled desktop linux is a new feature on the mainstream market, so there isn't that much uptake yet, althogh the eeepc was selling like hot cakes around Christmas. Is it that misguided bedroom creatures thinking the girl comes with it? And your settop box under your plasma probably has a free software infestation on it. But hey, nobody is otherwise doing it. Right. Except on servers and geek desktops, and some commies in third world countries, and paranoid anti-american governments here and there.

son of a bitch

vlado — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 08:15:12 -0500

A cool machinima video of The Fighting Cocks song.

not a raving loony but an informed individual

vlado — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 11:04:31 -0500

It seems that I'm not the only one with a evil A-life obsession. Just got in touch with an enlightened one from the I Hate Machines Possy - a progressive machine counter-insurgence bunker in teh interweb.

I haven't disclosed all of the info i hold on file - no time, really. But if you are observant, you'll notice that the human extermination insurgence is going from strength to strength.

Remember the recent Boeing incident at Heathrow? Rumours have it that it was an undisciplined jihady plane from a 'machines go to heaven' splinter cell trying to commit a suicidal act, crush the PM, and trigger the revolution, all the time dreaming of the kerosene realms and the oiled titanium maidens.

I've been reunited with one of my socks recently, which was kept hostage for a few weeks. The little thing claims it had to pretend to join the isurgence or die. It and was working in an under-ground bio-warfare lab, doing research on new modifications of tinea pedis. Have you noticed that feet smell worse and more often lately? How do I know that? You mean you can't smell talk with your socks? You bigots! Fair play though, it is an intricate lo-fi (and slow) communication medium. Very expressive, albeit often unpleasant. A hint - socks hate it when you piss on them - the smell literally pisses them off and you could end up with a bound bad smell socks collective on you feet.

i has a system and a sin

vlado — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 10:56:38 -0500

that's my shiny e17 desktop, being chased by gnomes, giving a hand to IE.

Rest in peace Bobby

vlado — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 10:14:19 -0500

Bobby Fisher, former chess world champion, chess genius and all around brilliant man has died. Rest in peace Mr Fisher

what is copyright?

vlado — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 10:39:00 -0500

from questioncopyright.org

Bulgaria's Abandoned Children

vlado — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 07:34:28 -0500

This documentary was shown on BBC in September (I think).

I was outraged and ashamed to be Bulgarian. Yes, it is criminal negligence of both the government of Bulgaria and probably of the society overall.

I am sorry

Trick of the light

vlado — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 06:32:40 -0500

Probably the most interesting science related story I've stumbled upon recently was Wired's Harvard Physicist Plays Magician With the Speed of Light.

Lene Vestergaard Hau can stop a pulse of light in midflight, start it up again at 0.13 miles per hour, and then make it appear in a completely different location. "It's like a little magic trick," says Hau...

All I can say is just watch the videos at nature - Trick of the light. It is quite accessible, usually stuff like quantum mechanics goes past my head faster than the speed of light, but this I could kinda grock. Just amazing, beautiful science. And Lene Vestergaard Hau is an alpha geek indeed.

Learning to speak - erlang style concurrency in haskell ( part II )

vlado — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 19:19:15 -0500

A second installment of my attempt to code erlang-style concurrency abstraction in haskell. The effort in part I, was a bit short of the mark. Here I try to address some of the shortcomings, while leaving others open.

The main problem was that the receiver could escape outside of the process, which can cause various hard to debug mayhem. What will happen if two different threads receive data from the same channel? Yes, it might be intentional, but you could always duplicate a channel for that. What if it is a bug? What if it is a piece of malicious code? Better safe than sorry.

digital restrictions management

vlado — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 16:03:13 -0500

digital rights restrictions management (DRM), noun: A technology that allows pants to be sold with a filching hand pre-installed in the pocket.

devil's dictionary 2.0

Learning to speak - erlang style concurrency in haskell

vlado — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 12:41:07 -0500

I'm on a learning haskell journey. But reading someone else's code and thoughts while educational is not that enlightening. Anyway, to cut the long story short:

I (still) want to see what this haskell thing is all about
I need a moderately complex problem to get a feeling of the haskell type system works, face the dreaded IO, while not wasting too much time
I need a decent actor style abstraction for some social/population based methods experiments I'm into

So this is how ended with Why not try my hand at erlang style concurrency. The best thing about it is that it aligns nicely with an individualistic view of the world. I can write sequential code to do something, which from time to time communicates with the rest of them, while the rest of the time doesn't really care.

Erlang implements lightweight processes with asynchronous messaging. The cool twist it puts on it is having reception guards - if a message is not matched by the guard conditions it stays in the mailbox (channel), and the rest of the messages are scanned. The first matching message is removed from the mailbox, the remaining messages are left in the mailbox in arrival order.

To view - A Taste of Haskell Part

vlado — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 19:28:38 -0500

Very good tutorial on Haskell by Samuel Peyton-Jones - A Taste of Haskell Part I & II And the slides.

Opens social is out

vlado — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 09:36:36 -0400

http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial is out. But what does that mean?

It is reffered to as a fightback against the facebook api. I read somewhere claims that Facebook API is 98% open, Open Social 100%.

That might be true, depends on your definition of open. It is a step in the right direction. I'm not sure if you can adhere to the api, but bypass google services completely. Need to read it, touch it see it. If the API is actually server/vendor/social network platform agnostic then it is definitely a big step in the right direction, and the numbers are not as above but more like 50-100. Especially with the prospect of weird and wonderful mashups between niche networks.

The privacy and security issues will rise exponentially, but they are solvable and there is a bit more understanding in the general populace.

wikipedia in my veins

vlado — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 05:42:01 -0400

Haven't followed xkcd for a few weeks now. It's a mistake. Big mistake. Missed another classic.

It is a visual proof of the need for wifi brain implants, you just don't know when you'll need direct connection with god. Until then, this is a good tip.

Atheists and Anger

vlado — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 07:10:55 -0400

So I want to talk about:

1. Why atheists are angry;

2. Why our anger is valid, valuable, and necessary;

And 3. Why it's completely fucked-up to try to take our anger away from us.

So let's start with why we're angry. Or rather -- because this is my blog and I don't presume to speak for all atheists -- why I'm angry.

Atheists and Anger

A wonderful passionate angry atheist rant.
+++ girl

Verstehen Sie Spass? - Unsichtbar

vlado — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 06:49:41 -0400

My daemon

vlado — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 11:08:56 -0400

ORB survey finds that more than 1,000,000 Iraqis murdered

vlado — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 11:58:43 -0400

Not news, just a chilling read.

In the week in which General Patraeus reports back to US Congress on the impact the recent ‘surge’ is having in Iraq, a new poll reveals that more than 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have been murdered since the invasion took place in 2003.
[......]
As well as a murder rate that now exceeds the Rwanda genocide from 1994 (800,000 murdered), not only have more than one million been injured but our poll calculates that of the millions of Iraqis that have fled their neighbourhoods, 52% have moved within Iraq but 48% have crossed its borders, with Syria taking the bulk of refugees.
More than 1,000,000 Iraqis murdered

No comment really needed. It's interesting that the highest rates of violent deaths are around the areas with allied troops. It doesn't prove anything more than the presence of troops seems to encourage violence.

Genocide seems to be a strong word, but if one follows the UN definition
"...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group" it seems like the violence in Iraq is of genocidal proportions, that is endangering to destroy (at least in part) the Iraqi populous. It doesn't mean that the allied troops are causing it directly with their military presence, but surely a big chunk of the responsibility through aggression, mismanagement, etc... lies in the White House and Downing Street.

What a sobering read. Not genocide, since the intent is probably missing, but who is going to actually answer for so many deaths? The road to hell and good intentions?