Older blog entries for jvic (starting at number 15)

8 Jul 2005 (updated 8 Jul 2005 at 16:49 UTC) »
Hola, hermanos!

I've just read a news that it's about to be approved a law that will make Spanish classes obligatory in every brazilian school. About time!

The funny thing is, i was actually talking about this very subject just last week with my girlfriend. I was telling her i feel like i need to learn spanish (haven't started taking classes yet), and how odd it is that we don't learn spanish at school. I mean, just look around. We're completely surrounded by spanish-speaking countries in Latin America, i feel ashamed i don't know spanish.

There's also another reason why i believe we should have spanish classes at school. And that is: english classes simply don't work at our schools, IMHO. If you wanna learn english, you better take private classes, at english courses. At school you'll just learn how to say "hello", "good morning", which ain't gonna be useful for nobody, really.

But why doesn't it work? I think it's mainly for 3 reasons:

  • English is way too different from our native-language (portuguese), and that itself is a huge barrier for many students;
  • Our school classes are too crowded, which makes it a mess for teaching english (too many uninterested students won't let the interested ones learn anything), which gets even worse because of the 1st point;
  • Sometimes the teacher isn't good enough (specially at public schools).

I don't know about point 3, but i definitely think points 1 and 2 would be a lot different were it spanish classes instead of english ones.

Now, i don't mean to say we shouldn't learn english; but i'd rather have our students speaking well portuguese and spanish, than speaking portuguese and barely speaking english.

11 Jun 2005 (updated 12 Jun 2005 at 02:15 UTC) »

Java2D with Cairo

Sven just showed me this demo he made of Classpath's Java2D using Cairo as a backend. Swing, here we come.

3 Jun 2005 (updated 3 Jun 2005 at 18:01 UTC) »
Getting a feeling of FISL

If you're one of us who couldn't make it to FISL -- where Mark, Dalibor, and other Classpath hackers are right now -- you can still see it through the TV SoftwareLivre. Today they've put more bandwidth, and the stream is really nice: i've been watching for almost an hour now (Marcelo Branco is talking right now, BTW), without interruptions!

Revenge of the <T>

So this is how Duke went to the dark side of the force.

Wrist rescue, and JG tutorial

Just bought an ergonomic keyboard and lots of other ergonomic gadgets. Need to get used to this keyboard, didn't think it would be so different. If you see me making lots of typos on irc or something, no, i'm not drunk.

In other news, hey a nice tutorial about Free Java and Gnome development.

Big media and Free Software

This week a very popular magazine (perhaps the most popular magazine) in Brazil, VEJA, had a small article criticising the government for being pro-FreeSoftware, which has caused some buzz around it.

Basically they point out that, this year, only 0.5% of the population did their taxes using the Linux version of our Tax Software, which means - they conclude - that the government "needs a reality check" (my words), and suggests we should be spending money on other issues.

No, they didn't talk about how many people were actually using illegal copies of MS Windows. Nor did they mention stats from last year so we could make some useful comparison. Like a friend once said: "if tortured, numbers will say anything".

If you take a look at the stats from last year (the 1st year we had a Tax Software on Linux; should be noticed), you'll see what they won't show you: the number of people doing taxes on Linux has simply tripled since then.

It's not the first time the big media here shows signs that it doesn't like Free Software very much (the arguments are always lame though), and that's some food for thought. It's a very irritating situation, because you know millions of people will be reading and believing that crap, and there's not much you can do about it. Luckily, we do have well-known people on our side, spreading the word wherever they go.

11 May 2005 (updated 11 May 2005 at 16:29 UTC) »
Java+Gnome

Lots of discussion going on about Java and its use by the Gnome/FOSS developers.

I personally think we're exagerating things a little bit on the "Should Gnome use Mono or Java or Python" issue. What i mean is, why restrict things to Mono, or Java? I agree with Jeff, i think things are pretty fine the way they are now.

One thing Christian said is exactly what i've been saying/thinking/doing for a while: we need more publicity. Honestly, if you ask me why Mono is so big between Gnome developers, what i think is: most of the time, because of the huge publicity there is behind it.

But it is unfair to say Java is going nowhere in the Gnome/FOSS world. It's just that we're not getting too much attention in the Gnome world yet; but GNU Classpath is going at full speed, and the Java-Gnome website went from about 5,000-10,000 hits per month to over 17,000 hits per month (and steady) as soon as we got a new website and organized ourselves. Our documentation is steadily getting better and better, as Mark points out. Java-Gnome is definitely growing and maturing nicely.

So, i reinforce Havoc's wishes: give Java, Eclipse, Java-Gnome, a chance.

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