http://www.advogato.org/ Recent Advogato articles en-us mod_virgule Thu, 2 Jul 2009 22:56:45 GMT http://www.advogato.org/article/1010.html http://www.advogato.org/article/1010.html Sun, 21 Jun 2009 14:38:18 GMT <b>Y'ALL - Happy Father's day.</b> <p> Playing Tom Traubert's 'Waltzing Matilda with me' <p> <pre> Wasted and wounded And it ain't what the moon did I got what I paid for now See you tomorrow Hey Frank can I borrow A couple of bucks from you To go waltzing Matilda waltzing Matilda You'll go waltzing Matilda with me </pre> http://www.advogato.org/article/1009.html http://www.advogato.org/article/1009.html Wed, 10 Jun 2009 14:21:19 GMT Splendid! crowed the witch. "Here's your fortune." <br> <pre> Otchky-potchky, itchky-pitch pay attention to this witch a donkey takes you to a knight him you conquer in a fight then you wed a princess who is even unglier than you HAHAHA... cockadoodle the magic words are "apple strudel" </pre> http://www.advogato.org/article/1008.html http://www.advogato.org/article/1008.html Fri, 17 Apr 2009 12:01:55 GMT I recently had an opportunity to develop a project in Python. I have previously had a largely neutral opinion about this language. However after more serious development I would like to share some doubts. <p> I will not be talking about the implementation - related issues. Also, Python do has positive, advanced features that are worth noting. Python code for the same task is really shorter: you need more C or even Java code to write something like a = b[:3], and especially b[-1] looks nicer then b.get(b.size()-1). But when line number rolls over the first thousand, more things began to matter. http://www.advogato.org/article/1007.html http://www.advogato.org/article/1007.html Mon, 23 Mar 2009 19:46:10 GMT The Program to CodeCon 2009 is now up, and registration is at the early rate of $75 for all three days until April 1st, after which the cost goes up. http://www.advogato.org/article/1006.html http://www.advogato.org/article/1006.html Sun, 15 Mar 2009 20:25:22 GMT happened to surf on Chuck H. Moore's new company IntellaSys.<p> I am browsing these whitepapers. Eash one seems to be a rare pearl by the SEA. <p> Extreme Forth by Steven Pelc on Sept. 2008 Dr. Dobb <p> <p> IMHO, Chuck has deviced a simple yet holistic way to see that the power of language and the power of circuit wouldn't cancel each other out in the process of solving complex machine-human problems. <p> The stick + the word + the floor plan <p> IntellaSys&rsquo; 40C Processor Technology Creates Benchmark <p> ThinkingForth in Chinese http://www.advogato.org/article/1005.html http://www.advogato.org/article/1005.html Mon, 9 Mar 2009 16:37:30 GMT The British Broadcasting Company has made a request for contributions to an open standard to be made, for the distribution of audio and video, both offline and real-time broadcasting. Their plan is effectively to act as the mediator between box manufacturers and content producers, with themselves as one of the content producers, but definitely not as set-top box manufacturers. <p> <p> Challenges faced include an assumption that it is reasonable to expect ISPs to insert cacheing boxes on their premises, and an assumption that "downloading" - especially at high speed - is "the way to go". Also, there is yet again the risk of some idiot content producers trying to DRM an open standard. <p> <p> This article will provide some answers to these tricky issues, and they're not all "Technical" answers. For the most part, the solutions are psychological, and take comfort in the fact that most users are ordinary people not interested in blatant copyright theft, they just want to watch stuff. Ultimately, content producers are going to have to get used to the fact that they are simply going to have to <i>trust</i> people. http://www.advogato.org/article/1004.html http://www.advogato.org/article/1004.html Mon, 9 Mar 2009 13:10:56 GMT As part of a reorganisation of Pyjamas, best known as a python port of GWT, dynamic module loading using AJAX has been added. The deployment of dynamic module loading results in over a 60% reduction in the amount of javascript cache file sizes, as the modules can be shared across multiple platforms (GAE pyjamas users are hitting the app engine limit even with the simplest of apps, due to the old one-cache-file-per-platform design). <p> This article describes how the standard technique for dynamic loading of javascript scripts was used as a basis for bring python "import" semantics to a javascript compiler. The advantages of individual module loading - including third party javascript modules - should be clear. http://www.advogato.org/article/1003.html http://www.advogato.org/article/1003.html Tue, 3 Mar 2009 13:01:17 GMT Abstract:<br> Language acquisition and processing are governed by genetic constraints. A crucial unresolved question is how far these genetic constraints have coevolved with language, perhaps resulting in a highly specialized and species-specific language "module," and how much language acquisition and processing redeploy preexisting cognitive machinery. In the present work, we explored the circumstances under which genes encoding language-specific properties could have coevolved with language itself. We present a theoretical model, implemented in computer simulations, of key aspects of the interaction of genes and language. Our results show that genes for language could have coevolved only with highly stable aspects of the linguistic environment; a rapidly changing linguistic environment does not provide a stable target for natural selection. Thus, a biological endowment could not coevolve with properties of language that began as learned cultural conventions, because cultural conventions change much more rapidly than genes. We argue that this rules out the possibility that arbitrary properties of language, including abstract syntactic principles governing phrase structure, case marking, and agreement, have been built into a "language module" by natural selection. The genetic basis of human language acquisition and processing did not coevolve with language, but primarily predates the emergence of language. As suggested by Darwin, the fit between language and its underlying mechanisms arose because language has evolved to fit the human brain, rather than the reverse. http://www.advogato.org/article/1002.html http://www.advogato.org/article/1002.html Wed, 25 Feb 2009 14:51:07 GMT The UK Government has made it clear that Open Source and Open Standards, with a focus on re-use of software development and deployment, is to clearly and unequivocably be part of the decision-making for UK Government I.T. procurement and contracting. Also part of the policy is a clear committment to engage with the Free Software community and to actively encourage the development of "Government-Class" Free Software products. <p> <p> <tt>(tag keyword: #ukgovOSS at the cabinet office's request)</tt> http://www.advogato.org/article/1001.html http://www.advogato.org/article/1001.html Fri, 20 Feb 2009 17:00:51 GMT At FOSDEM 2009, Gary Benson of Red Hat presented Shark. (Slides at http://gbenson.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/fosdem-2009.pdf) Shark is a port of OpenJDK that uses LLVM to do JIT code generation. While Shark is pretty fast when compared with OpenJDK's C++ interpreter, it's still quite a lot slower than gcj. gcj is a fairly straightforward bytecode-&gt;native compiler and doesn't use many of the Java-specific optimizations in HotSpot, so I was of the opinion that Shark and gcj ought to be similar in speed. So, I wanted to find out why Shark was slower than gcj. http://www.advogato.org/article/1000.html http://www.advogato.org/article/1000.html Fri, 13 Feb 2009 21:50:53 GMT I thought I would make use of the 1000th advogato article to write to emphasise my pride in your accomplishments at the Samba "Franky" architecture, and also to emphasise to you that I am fully aware of its strategic significance. http://www.advogato.org/article/999.html http://www.advogato.org/article/999.html Fri, 13 Feb 2009 21:22:13 GMT The 10th anniversary of "Welcome to the SAMBA Domain" quietly passed on Thursday 28th of August, 2007, without acknowledgement. When Paul Ashton and Luke Leighton initially reverse-engineered and published the NT Domains protocol, the floodgates were opened to both Free Software and Proprietary CIFS vendors to interoperate with Microsoft's flagship product, Windows NT, at an unprecedented level. <p> <p> The anticipated reprisals from Microsoft did not happen: incredibly, instead, quiet mutual respect and cooperation crystallised the CIFS protocols into formal specifications (some of which were quietly handed out, whilst others had to wait until they were prised from Microsoft's fingers by the U.S. Dept of Justice and the E.U Commission). <p> <p> In the intervening eleven years, an enormous amount has been achieved, yet, frustratingly, an enormous amount has not. This article outlines the accomplishments to date, and highlights the incredible things that <i>could</i> be achieved if some specific strategic inter-project free software cooperation took place. Also outlined are some hints as to how that can be accomplished, citing examples of prior proven work in which it has already been achieved, but not yet adopted. http://www.advogato.org/article/998.html http://www.advogato.org/article/998.html Thu, 12 Feb 2009 17:11:56 GMT <p>Joe Wein covers Windows 7 versus Linux on netbooks. "Does it really matter to Microsoft shareholders and employees if the 21 million or so netbooks expected to be sold this year (and the even bigger numbers in 2010) will be running some version of Windows or a version of Linux (which is free), if previously those buyers would have picked up a more powerful machine that netted Microsoft $40-$100 per license?" <p> Don Marti offers his insights into the Netbook and the Linux combination. http://www.advogato.org/article/997.html http://www.advogato.org/article/997.html Thu, 5 Feb 2009 15:50:06 GMT <p>Issue 11, December/January 2009 <p> <p>Welcome to the Free Software Supporter, the Free Software Foundation's monthly news digest and action update -- being read by you and 15,508 other activists. <p> <p>Encourage your friends to subscribe and help us build an audience by adding our subscriber widget to your web site. <p> <ul> <li>Subscribe: http://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter <li>Widget: http://www.fsf.org/associate/widget </ul> <p> <p>Miss an issue? You can catch up on back issues at http://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter. <p> <p>Multilingual? Send translations of the Supporter to &amp;#x63;&#97;&#109;&amp;#x70;&#97;&amp;#x69;&amp;#x67;n&amp;#x73;&#64;&amp;#x66;&#115;&amp;#x66;&amp;#x2E;&#111;&#114;g. <p> <pre>*************************************************** <p> DON'T MISS... the first ever... <p> / /(_) |__ _ __ ___ / _ \ | __ _ _ __ ___| |_ / / | | '_ \| '__/ _ \/ /_)/ |/ _` | '_ \ / _ \ __| / /__| | |_) | | | __/ ___/| | (_| | | | | __/ |_ \____/_|_.__/|_| \___\/ |_|\__,_|_| |_|\___|\__| <p> ...LibrePlanet <p> CONFERENCE. MARCH 21/22nd 2009. CAMBRIDGE, MA. 02138 <p> &lt;http://www.fsf.org/associate/meetings/2009/&gt; <p> autonomo.us | FSF | High-Priority-Projects | GNU <p> ****************************************************</pre> <p> <ul> <li>LibrePlanet Conference 2009! <li>FSF files suit against Cisco for GPL violations <li>BadVista: We hardly knew ye <li>GCC libraries get updated license exception <li>An open response to Chris Frey regarding GFDL 1.3 <li>Updating the Free Software Definition <li>More background about the Cisco case <li>The bootable membership cards are (finally) here! <li>3D graphics are 100% free software <li>Freedom Walk: A walk to claim, ensure and preserve freedom <li>Psst! Pass it on! <li>New FSF microblogging communities <li>PlayOgg: Theora 1.0 is released! <li>35 Days Against DRM (In 35 paragraphs) <li>Apple iTunes goes DRM free on music <li>Microsoft defends DRM. Badly. <li>GNU spotlight with Karl Berry <li>Richard Stallman's speaking schedule <li>Take action! </ul> http://www.advogato.org/article/996.html http://www.advogato.org/article/996.html Wed, 28 Jan 2009 22:00:27 GMT The much-anticipated next CodeCon has now been announced, and the Call For Presentations is out - http://www.codecon.org/2009/