Older blog entries for fzort (starting at number 186)

sye: Prevayler is a joke. It's embarrassing how the interviewer thought it was necessary to ask about it, probably because the leader of that project, like the site you linked, is Brazilian.

ncm: thank you very much for pointing out that paper. I've only read the abstract, but it looks... interesting.

I haven't released any free software in a while, so I decided to stop being a d*ck and release the source code for Protozoa, an arcade action game I wrote a while ago.

Source: http://www.fzort.org/protozoa/protozoa-src-20100617.tar.gz
README for the source: http://www.fzort.org/protozoa/README.source.txt

Placed in the public domain (GPL doesn't make much sense for games). Have fun!

wingo writes about anarchy. He's free to do that, of course, but it should be pointed out that, under that regime, computer programming as a profession, or even computers, would probably not even exist. There are examples, these days, of countries which are effectively without government, and they aren't exactly doing smashingly.

Yes, capitalism sucks, but alternatives were tried and they all failed. In my own country, we lived under an inflation of 2500%/year (not a typo), until decidedly pro-market reforms were implemented. Much more could have been done, if only those reforms weren't so vigorously opposed at the time by the left-wing party which is currently in power. Said left-wing party now doesn't dare touch the fundamentals of those economic reforms, and brags about the positive results as if they were they were exclusively of their own doing, but it doesn't matter. They worked.

A theory

Zaitcev, chalst: hjclub once posted a guide on piercing the Great Firewall of China (Google Translator - click on "Translate"), which is noble and everything. Maybe that's what made atai give him/her the certification. It's possible that hjclub simply doesn't understand English very well, and certified the spammer because (s)he liked the cute pandas. Don't ascribe to malice, et cetera.

Could any of the Chinese-speaking Advogato users out there convince hjclub to lift the certification?

Edit: I was wrong.

ncm: why? Hard to imagine how it could be more idiotic than the shuttle. (Not trolling, just curious.)

Moving out

I'm moving my "diary" to livejournal. Once in a while I feel like writing about stuff that's off topic for Advogato (I've just posted an entry on politics there). I haven't been doing a lot of free software lately, anyway.

chalst: base32?

Deluxe agglutination

Yume no naka e itte mitai to omoimasen ka?
    -- lyrics for an old Japanese pop hit

• yume no naka: inside a dream
• iku: to go (infinitive)
• itte: going (-te form of iku - gerund, kinda)
• itte miru: try going
• itte mitai: want to try going
• itte mitai to omoimasu: think about wanting to try going
• itte mitai to omoimasen ka?: how about wanting to try going?
• yume no naka e itte mitai to omoimasen ka?: don't you want to try going into a dream?

Yeah yeah, off-topic for Advogato... but who's reading this anyway?

Yeah, "Go". Like it usually happens with anything coming from Google, I got bombarded with links to this from random people.

Far be it from me to disagree with Ken Thompson, but I respectfully take issue with the following item in their FAQ:

Go doesn't provide assertions. They are undeniably convenient, but our experience has been that programmers use them as a crutch to avoid thinking about proper error handling and reporting.

assert() is not meant to be used for error handling and reporting. It should be used to enforce (and document) invariants. Leave it out of your language if you will, but I'll keep using it until someone pries it from my cold, dead fingers.

On other news, still studying Japanese. Less than one month to the test.

Cheat Sheet

• mado o shimemasu: I close the window.
• mado o shimemashou: let's close the window!
• mado o shimetai desu: I want to close the window.
• mado o shimenagara (...): while I close the window (...)
• mado no shimekata ga wakarimasu: I know how to close the window.
• (place e) mado o shime ni ikimashita: I went (to place) to close the window.
• mado o shimete imasu: I am closing the window.
• mado o shimete (kara), (...): after I close the window, (...)
• mado o shimete kudasai: please close the window.
• mado o shimete mo ii desu: you may close the window.
• mado o shimete wa ikemasen: you may not close the window.
• mado o shimete dame desu: you may not close the window (rude).
• (person ni) mado o shimete hoshii desu: I want (person|you) to close the window.
• mada mado o shimete imasen: I haven't closed the window yet.
• mado o shimete mimashou: let's try and close the window.
• mado o shimeru: I close the window (plain form - avoid if you're older than 6).
• mado o shimeru mae ni (...): before I close the window (...)
• mado o shimeru koto ga dekimasu: I (can|am able to) close the window.
• mado o shimeru koto ga adjective desu: closing the window is adjective.
• mado o shimeru tsumori desu: I'm planning to close the window.
• mado o shimeru (kara|no de) (...): I close the window, therefore (...)