[ Home | Articles | Account | People | Projects | FAQ ] This year I needed to do a project in a language that is both old and notable but still understood as unusual and exotic: Eiffel. I did not know Eiffel in the past and needed to learn it very quickly to do my task. Hence this article is not about Eiffel itself, it ist about a newcomers impression about Eiffel. I will be writing about the "classic" Eiffel with EiffelStudio, not about SmartEiffel and other interesting clones that surely also deserve a lot of attention.
Read more... (0 replies)
Advogato.org is officially 10 years old. Raph made the first Advogato diary post on Nov 5, 1999 and the first article was posted on Nov 6, 1999. Ten years may not seem like much, but it's a long time in Internet years. Not many blogging or social networking sites can claim to be that old. Happy Birthday!
Read more... (8 replies)
This is the first of a series of essays I will publish here and elsewhere, in an effort to solve what I regard as some fundamental problems that are endemic to the computer industry.
I have felt called to my Duty several times in my career. I have never regretted performing it, but doing so has been a heavy burden, as it always came at great cost. This is one of those times - I will explain in the next essay I publish just why.
November 1, 2005
My father Charless Russell Crawford was an engineer too, an electrical engineer. Once a carpenter, he was inspired to enlist in the Navy one snowy evening while roofing a house, when he struck his thumb real hard with a hammer. The Navy sensed my father's potential for leadership and sent him to study at the University of Idaho, where he met my mother Patricia Ann Speelmon. My sister was born while they were still students. After graduation, he went on to Officer Candidate School and was given his commission. The telegram with news of my birth took two weeks to reach him: he was deep in the Phillipine jungle getting trained in survival, as the Vietnam War was just then heating up: the year was 1964. My father's engineering specialty was antiaircraft missile electronics: guidance and control systems.
The lesson my father taught me, a lesson I only now, as I speak, realize for the first time I was ever taught, is to Do My Duty. You already know my father did his for his country. I want you to know that he did his duty to his family as a husband, father and provider, and he did it well. He did his duty as a teacher too: I learned science and engineering at my father's knee, as we worked on projects together. Once we had a contest to see who could make a working telephone from stuff found lying around the house.
Engineers have other Masters who demand duty of us: our profession, our conscience, those who invest in, purchase or use what we design, our coworkers, and the public.
Listen to me carefully, and never forget what I'm about to say. I want all of you to spend some time thinking it over deeply, then I want you to discuss it among yourselves:
Read more... (1 reply)
The Internet is a tool to connect people, to empower them to share information and knowledge. Through increased communication, one person's contribution becomes everyone's gain. Through the power of collaboration, many minds can achieve what one person alone could not. It sounds like either a recipe for a Utopia or for a nightmare, which starkly reminds us that with great power comes great responsibility. And it's our right to be given the choice, to take advantage of the opportunity that the Internet represents. But there is something happening to the "InterWeb": the tracks are being ripped up. Mandelson in the UK. "3 Strikes" in France. Fascist Censorship in Australia. Phorm. Net Neutrality. The Pirate Bay attacks. The RIAA. The DMCA. There's a recurring and accelerating theme of attacks, which have accelerated over the past ten years, to attempt to control what can and cannot be done with the Internet, that is beginning to blur with Science Fiction predictions from well-renowed authors. The question is: why? What's the driving force, and what motivates these attacks, when, mathematically and statistically, they are simply impossible, leaving an alienated populace feeling threatened by and distrusting their Governments, just like in China, Iran and other "Regimes" which we believe that we are "better than"?
Read more... (7 replies)
In relation to the Wikipedia applet proposal, I am currently moving through the web in the hopeless search of some FOSS project that would show at least weak interest in scanning of Java source code for bad intents. One of the huge advantages Wikipedia or other public server could provide is that we have the applet sources and can compile on a server side. Among other things this allows to strip the signature easily, maybe we could do more.
Read more... (5 replies)
flogger asks
on slashdot what sci-fi stories are recommended for reading as part
of a teaching class about sci-fi. As
I've read over 500 sci-fi and fantasy books, and own over 300, I've
written up some of the best. Covering history, politics and the best
and worst of human nature, science fiction's freedom opens doors which
remain firmly closed to traditional fiction. It just has to be done
well enough to be believable.
(updated 7oct2009 with fantasy list)
Read more... (3 replies)
Eric Raymond's software bazaar is a fantasy.
Read more... (13 replies)
The look into Tiobe index may give quite a surprising results if we pay attention into that is happening during the latest year. Java seems no longer declining, Python and C# are also kind of stable but we clearly observe the growth of C language popularity. It is even not C++ but a plain C.
I wonder it this is just some transient event or the reliable shift.
Read more... (5 replies)
Want to find more technical conferences? Here's my hotlist.
Read more... (2 replies)
Wikipedia recently posted a call for strategic proposals, and one subset of them looks quite interesting for me - it is a bunch of proposals to support some kind of the client side scripting. They have a choice between JavaScript, Flash, Java and Silverlight. After all that at the end happened with FOSS Java implementation, Java applets seem an interesting option so let's propose.
To be heard by needed people, this proposal have been uploaded to Wikipedia Strategic Projects space so it can also be viewed there. It is up to you where to make the comments.
Read more... (12 replies)
Advogato is devoted to the public good through its support of free software.
Advogato logo by Ville Pätsi
