Check:

http://www.advogato.org/article/527.html

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish



----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish        shlomif@...
Home Page:         http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
Home E-mail:       shlomif@...

"Let's suppose you have a table with 2^n cups..."
"Wait a second - is n a natural number?"

This is episode 1 of a sitcom I'm writing. It tells the story of a web
publishing company. I should give a description of the characters, but
it's too late now anyway. I think it is very different than User Friendly.
(which I like a lot).

Comments, suggestions, corrections and flames are welcome.

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish

[A Black Screen. Some Letters are written one by one to the screen in a fixed
font]

<<<
#!/usr/bin/perl

Then a -w is added and then:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

# Hmmm... now what?
>>>

Paul: Hi, can you please tell me in what language this del_temp_files.py
of yours is written?

Tony: Python, I think. Why?

Paul: I am not going to maintain a Python script.

Tony: I'll maintain it for you.

Paul: No, you won't. Re-write in Perl.

Tony: But Python has...

Paul: I'm sure Perl has that too. If you need to install a CPAN module,
you know you can always do it.

Tony: OK. But in the worst case you can rewrite it from scratch?

Paul: And who will save me from the hit-men that Joel Sposlky is going
to send to kill me?

Tony: Look, I read this article. It's very nice. But he was talking about
a 100,000 lines + codebase, not about a 20-liner.

Paul: A little calculation. Let's suppose I want to add a flag. A fix
for it would take 1 minute to write and debug. Rewriting an entire
script from scratch would take half an hour. Which is better? Hmmm...
Hard Decision.

Tony: I think sometimes it's better to start over.

Paul: Granted. But the add, clean up, add, clean up, cycle takes much
less time.

[Cut]
[Michelle is standing near a brand new computer]

Michelle: Hmmm... I love the smell of a new workstation in the morning.

Now what should I install? [Picks up a few CDs] Gentoo? Takes
too long to compile everything. [Puts the CD in a different stack] Debian?
[puts   Takes too long to upgrade to testing. Slackware? The package
management from hell. S.u.S.e? No.

Red Hat? Mandrake is nicer. [Shouts to the other room] Hey what should I
install on the new workstation?

From the other room: RedHat! Debian! Slack!

Michelle: Mandrake it is.

[Cut. Tony is sitting in the same room, alone. Alan Enters]

Alan: Hi!

Tony: Hi! Aren't you the new intern?

Alan: Yes. Alan Summers [they shake hands].

Tony: What's you story?

Alan: I'm an English student, studied a bit programming in the university.
Installed Linux at home and got hooked. Don't know much but I'm getting
there.

Tony: Here's a gift for you. [gives him a copy of the Perl CD Bookshelf
from a stack]

Alan: The Perl CD Bookshelf. Gee thanks.

Tony: And you can keep it even if you leave tomorrow. BTW, what's your
favourite console editor?

Alan: I started with pico, but then realized it was braindead, and looked
for something similar. Someone told me about joe and I got hooked.

Tony: joe? [shouting] joe? [opens his hands] Man! I love you already! [hugs
him]

Alan: You use joe too?

Tony: Nah, I'm an Emacs man myself. But joe is much better than pico. You
should see our semi-annual Emacs vs. VI shootout.

[sits at the computer]

Now here are some URLs. Read Freshmeat a lot, and I mean a lot. Slashdot
has good content, but stay away from the comments. SweetCode is a must
read. To learn perl quickly and nicely, check out this perl tutorial or
Perl for Perl Newbies [{shameless plug}] of those Haifa Linux Club
creatures. And while we're at it don't ever miss the Haifa Linux Club site.

Alan: Why?

Tony: they give a lecture about Linux every two weeks and every one is
online.

Alan: They sound like sick people to me.

Tony: they are. But my best friends are sick.

Alan: Maybe I'm new here, but can't you prepare a page or a small site, with
all of these URLs already in place?

Tony: Great idea! Tell you what, I'll work on it now.

Alan: And what should I do?

Tony: Learn Perl. Take your time. And, BTW, you can't avoid reading the man
pages, but it's not the best source to learn Perl from.

Alan: OK. Just learn.

Tony: And write some programs. You know: the Hanoi Towers, Copy a file. Hmmm...
I should prepare a list of exercises.



---


[Cut.]

[Michelle is sitting next to a computer. Alan Enters]

Alan: Hey. I understand you are installing Linux on my computer.

Michelle: Yep. Mandrake 8.2. Now it installs all the packages. Did you
read "Back to Basics" by Joel Spolsky?

Alan: No, net yet. Albeit I read about him on Slashdot.

Michelle: Brilliant article. Do so. You see this is a 1.7 giga-hertz machine,
and if something runs fine here, it does not mean it would on our
extremely loaded server. Makes sure your algorithms are not braindead.

Alan: Can I know your name before this discussion goes any further?

Michelle: Sorry. Michelle Slavsky. Prima Hackeressa here. Not the best
hacker and not the CTO, but more experienced than Tanya. For now, at least.

Alan: Why?

Michelle: This kid is learning fast!

[Turns her chair]

You're Alan right?

Alan: Yep.

[The computer beeps]

Michelle: Oooh. Time to switch a CD.

[Cut]

[Robert enters the room where Michelle and Alan sit next to a computer]

Robert: Hey Mik, and who might you be?

Alan: I'm Alan, the new intern.

Robert: Oh, now I remember. Alan. I guarantee you that I'll forget
your name, so please don't mind if I ask you what it is.

Alan: That's OK. I tell my name to people on the time, and I'm not
unlike that either. Back in the university more people know me by name
than I know theirs.

Robert: Yes, that seems to be the case for everybody. Except that it's
mathematically impossible... I think.

Never mind, please come to my office later today, and I'll talk to you
about the Tao of Programming.

Alan: The Tao of Programming.

Robert: That's right. How to become a good programmer. And how to become
one as quickly as possible. In the One True Way, trademark.

Alan: Do you have schedules, BTW?

Robert: Of course. But they are realistic. We never force someone to
stay late at work if he doesn't want to.

Alan: Why?

Robert: One thing is because tired programmers are sloppy and write bad
code, and usually can't get anything done anyway. Another thing is
that both me, being the CTO and the CEO are voluntarist at hearts.

Alan: And Linux is the living proof.

Robert: Did I mention I'm the CTO?

Michelle: Robert, you just did.

Robert: Super. Keep up the good work.

[ Leaves the room]

Michelle: That was Robert - he's amazing. He used to be my guru for a while.

Alan: And who's your guru now.

Michelle: Nobody. I'm guru-less, care-less and free.

Alan: Cool. I wish I could feel that way.

Michelle: You will and When you do, you'll know that You Were
Enlightened trademark.

Alan: OK.

Michelle: One thing I'll always remember is that he did not know that
grep could search through files. And I knew that by working with the
Borland version of grep that I found on Windows.

Alan: Unbelievable. Every half decent manual out there shows you
"grep hello *" as one of the first example.

Michelle: Yeah. OK, back to business. Now, you know how commands are
parsed in bash?

Alan: More or less. I know that asterisk expands to the list of files,
and that double quotes wrap stuff where I can still put variables, and
single quotes are the same only with dollars and backslashes being that.

Michelle: Good boy. [ Pats his head ] Now, there are some more caveats,
especially with bash. Back-quotes are your worst nightmare - they execute
the command and return its output on the command line. Very dangerous.
But they are treated like a string. $( ... ) is a much nicer version
that puts them in a sub-shell. Won't work in System V's /bin/sh, but we
don't care about them.

Alan: Why?

Michelle: I would not touch such a system voluntarily with a ten-meters-long
pole.

[Cut]

Black Screen:

Message: Later that day.

Tim: people, people gather around. [Everybody gathers around] First of
all, I'd like to welcome our newest employee: Alan Summers. Alan: I wish
you good luck. Work hard, and have fun hard, preferably but not necessarily
both at the same time.

Everybody laughs.

Alan: Thanks. I already like this place.

Tim: If you need anything, let me know. We have a bookshelf of books there,
and we order any books except reading books on demand. Michelle here, takes
advantage of it to order a lot of pop psychology books, but they have proven
to be useful.

Alan: Sounds nice, but I think I'll wait before I'll take advantage of it.

Tim: Perfectly fine with me. Now it's time for "donating something to a good
cause". I talked with my accountant and we have a $1000 this week. So whose
first?

Tony: I am. We work with CVS. Well, I tried BitKeeper and it kicks ass. Except
for branching which is nicer on CVS. Problem is: it costs a lot of money, and
Larry McVoy is rather possessive about it. Now, this guy works on Arch, which
aims to be a good BitKeeper replacement, it's usable, but isn't quite there
yet. And now he asks for donation. I think we should give it to him.

Tim: Sounds nice. Does anybody agree?

Everybody: Yes. Yes. Fine by me.

Tim: Oh well. We donated to LWN last week. Meeting is adjurned.

[Cut.]

Robert: Alan, let me tell you the secret of good programming: time. You
become a better one with every passing day. Three monthes after you
write a piece of code, it looks like junk to you. That's why people insist
on their employees to have experience.

But that's not the entire secret: some people are much better programmers
after a year, than most programmers out there with ten years of experience.
But that's because they are eager to learn new languages and new technologies
and know that learning is a dynamic process.

Alan: So? I knew that.

Robert: Well, it's not the only thing I can tell you about becoming a good
programmer.

Alan: so go on.

Robert: Why thanks! See, good code requires a good design. Without good design,
you'll end up refactoring it too much. But don't over-engineer. You see,
you need to have a good design, that can easily be extended.

Alan: How do I do that?

Robert: If you are good, you'll see that a project's TODO list always grows
or remain constant. Think about all the features you'd like to have and
think how to implement them. Don't put them in, but make sure they can all be
implemented with some effort.

Alan: OK. Good.

Robert: Now, rewriting the entire codebase from scratch is something you
usually should not do...

[The End]




For another episode:

[Linus Torvalds Enters. Applause]

Linus: Hello.

Tony: Hi! You are Linus Torvalds, right?

Linus: Yes.

Tony: Nice to meet you. They shake hands.

[Tony gets back to sitting next to the computer]

[Pause]

Linus [waits a little]: Isn't there something you want to ask me
or say to me? The patch penguin fiasco? BitKeeper? The Dave Jones Tree?

Tony: Actually, there is one. [Turns to Linus] You're disturbing me.

.
.
.

Linus: I met Tony. He was not excited to meet me at all.

Tim: He gets this way. You should have seen the day that Sarah Michelle
Gellar came to visit.

Linus: Let me guess - you host a "Buffy" fan site.

Tim: 5th place on Google, and it's of one of our employees.

Linus: Whose Employee?

Tim: Tony.








----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish        shlomif@...
Home Page:         http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
Home E-mail:       shlomif@...

"Let's suppose you have a table with 2^n cups..."
"Wait a second - is n a natural number?"

On Fri, Aug 02, 2002, Shlomi Fish wrote about "[hackers-il] #!/usr/bin/perl -
Episode 1":
>
> This is episode 1 of a sitcom I'm writing. It tells the story of a web
> publishing company. I should give a description of the characters, but
> it's too late now anyway. I think it is very different than User Friendly.
> (which I like a lot).

There's something I don't understand. Who's the target of this sitcom???
Is it going to be broadcast on the Cable Geek Network?

It contains far too much technical jargon, insider information, and
programming details, in my opinion. Do you think that many TV viewers will
understand what you're trying to say about Redhat/Debian/Gentoo/etc., for
example?

Take a look at other TV series, either drama or comedy, showing various
professions (doctors, lawyers, police, social workers, newspaper, etc., etc.).
In none of these will you find a technical term every two seconds. You'll
find them once in a while to make the thing look real, but your enjoyment
of the show should not hinge on your detailed knowledge of medicine, law, law
enforcement, or in this case computer programming. Most of the "stories" in
these series revolve around human-interest stories, and the professional
details are used only as a background.

Even in the most "technical" drama series I know, like E.R. and CSI ("crime
scene investigation"), the suspense and buildup of "drama" is more important
than the actual technical terms used.

In comedies, the actual technicalities are usually (as far as I saw) kept
even rarer. Think about shows like Nanny (a nanny and a broadway producer),
Murphy Brown (TV reporter), Wings (pilots and airport personnel), MASH and
Major Dad (military), The Naked Truth (tabloid reporters), Norm (social
worker), Are You Being Served (store clerks), Just Shoot Me (fashion reporter)
and probably a hundred other examples. You rarely see the people "doing their
job". You don't see on these shows people spending half an episode writing a
newspaper article, flying an airplane, planning an attack on the enemy, or
things like that, because they are too technical to be funny to the general
population.

Also, don't forget, if this is to be a sitcom (SITuation COMedy), it must
be funny. Have real jokes that make people laugh. Puns about System V /bin/sh
usually won't make even a Linux geek laugh :(

I liked the Linus Torvalds sketch, it was actually pretty funny if you know
who Linus Torvalds is (or at least understand that he's supposed to be someone
Really Important).

Other small notes:
* You have stuff like "$( ... )", "grep hello *", "Enlightened trademark" -
   how are these going to be spoken out without sounding ridiculous?
* The idiom is "I wouldn't touch ... with a ten foot pole". Don't add "long",
   and don't make it meters. If you don't want to use imperial measurements,
   don't, but don't use this idiom either.

--
Nadav Har'El                        |         Saturday, Aug 3 2002, 25 Av 5762
nyh@...             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |If you tell the truth, you don't have to
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |remember anything.

Oh Jesus Christ!

In one paragraph or two, while being completely honest and sincere. Did
_you_, Nadav Har'El, liked it or did you not? Did it make you laugh? I
can't see the forest from the trees.

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish



----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish        shlomif@...
Home Page:         http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
Home E-mail:       shlomif@...

"Let's suppose you have a table with 2^n cups..."
"Wait a second - is n a natural number?"

On Sat, Aug 03, 2002, Shlomi Fish wrote about "[hackers-il] Re: #!/usr/bin/perl
- Episode 1":
>
> Oh Jesus Christ!

No, he had nothing to do with it.

> In one paragraph or two, while being completely honest and sincere. Did
> _you_, Nadav Har'El, liked it or did you not? Did it make you laugh? I
> can't see the forest from the trees.

You can't see the forest from the trees?? All the "trees" said one thing:
This is a long way from being a sitcom. Most of the script wasn't funny,
in my opinion, especially to the general population for which the words
"Perl", "Python", "/bin/sh" and even "Linux" don't mean a thing.

The rest of the "trees" in my postings were more detailed suggestions on
what, I think, makes a good sitcom and why your script is problematic. If
you want to ignore it, fine, after all I'm not a movie or TV expert. But
what I wrote was just common sense, I think.

Is that honest and sincere enough for you?

--
Nadav Har'El                        |         Saturday, Aug 3 2002, 25 Av 5762
nyh@...             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |Despite the cost of living, have you
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |noticed how it remains so popular?

On Sat, 3 Aug 2002, Nadav Har'El wrote:

> On Sat, Aug 03, 2002, Shlomi Fish wrote about "[hackers-il] Re:
#!/usr/bin/perl - Episode 1":
> >
> > Oh Jesus Christ!
>
> No, he had nothing to do with it.
>

It's an expression.

> > In one paragraph or two, while being completely honest and sincere. Did
> > _you_, Nadav Har'El, liked it or did you not? Did it make you laugh? I
> > can't see the forest from the trees.
>
> You can't see the forest from the trees?? All the "trees" said one thing:
> This is a long way from being a sitcom. Most of the script wasn't funny,
> in my opinion, especially to the general population for which the words
> "Perl", "Python", "/bin/sh" and even "Linux" don't mean a thing.
>

I don't aim it for the general population. _I_ like computers, and I'm
going to write about a topic I like. I don't say I'm going to adapt the
script for the masses, but I'm still going to think and act in a Linuxy
way.

> The rest of the "trees" in my postings were more detailed suggestions on
> what, I think, makes a good sitcom and why your script is problematic. If
> you want to ignore it, fine, after all I'm not a movie or TV expert. But
> what I wrote was just common sense, I think.
>
> Is that honest and sincere enough for you?
>

It is. Your commentary was very helpful. I'd like to switch further
discussion of the script to the humanity mailing list:

A permanent location for the script can be found here:

http://humanity.berlios.de/usr-bin-perl/

Version 0.2.0 of Episode 1 was already a little revised.

BTW:

1. I'm not such a bad sitcom writer - after you've read the Fountainhead
(which I recommend anyway you look at it, and I can lend it to you), you
might wish to take a look at "The One with the Fountainhead" on my site. I
was told it was very funny by at least two people, one of whom was not
familiar with the show. (albeit it helps)

2. Sitcom scripts when read are usually not as funny as watching the
episode on T.V.. Even Friends (all of whose chapters were written down),
seems to suffer from this symptom.

In any case, I'm not going to dumb out the contents on purpose, adding
streotypical geeks jokes, and stuff. And there's more to my art than just
wanting to make people laugh, despite the fact that the latter is a noble
cause as any.

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish

> --
> Nadav Har'El                        |         Saturday, Aug 3 2002, 25 Av 5762
> nyh@...             |-----------------------------------------
> Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |Despite the cost of living, have you
> http://nadav.harel.org.il           |noticed how it remains so popular?
>
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> hackers-il-unsubscribe@egroups.com
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>



----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish        shlomif@...
Home Page:         http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
Home E-mail:       shlomif@...

"Let's suppose you have a table with 2^n cups..."
"Wait a second - is n a natural number?"

On Sat, 3 Aug 2002, Nadav Har'El wrote:

> On Fri, Aug 02, 2002, Shlomi Fish wrote about "[hackers-il] #!/usr/bin/perl -
Episode 1":
> >
> > This is episode 1 of a sitcom I'm writing. It tells the story of a web
> > publishing company. I should give a description of the characters, but
> > it's too late now anyway. I think it is very different than User Friendly.
> > (which I like a lot).
>
> There's something I don't understand. Who's the target of this sitcom???
> Is it going to be broadcast on the Cable Geek Network?
>
> It contains far too much technical jargon, insider information, and
> programming details, in my opinion. Do you think that many TV viewers will
> understand what you're trying to say about Redhat/Debian/Gentoo/etc., for
> example?
>
> Take a look at other TV series, either drama or comedy, showing various
> professions (doctors, lawyers, police, social workers, newspaper, etc., etc.).
> In none of these will you find a technical term every two seconds. You'll
> find them once in a while to make the thing look real, but your enjoyment
> of the show should not hinge on your detailed knowledge of medicine, law, law
> enforcement, or in this case computer programming. Most of the "stories" in
> these series revolve around human-interest stories, and the professional
> details are used only as a background.
>
> Even in the most "technical" drama series I know, like E.R. and CSI ("crime
> scene investigation"), the suspense and buildup of "drama" is more important
> than the actual technical terms used.
>
> In comedies, the actual technicalities are usually (as far as I saw) kept
> even rarer. Think about shows like Nanny (a nanny and a broadway producer),
> Murphy Brown (TV reporter), Wings (pilots and airport personnel), MASH and
> Major Dad (military), The Naked Truth (tabloid reporters), Norm (social
> worker), Are You Being Served (store clerks), Just Shoot Me (fashion reporter)
> and probably a hundred other examples. You rarely see the people "doing their
> job". You don't see on these shows people spending half an episode writing a
> newspaper article, flying an airplane, planning an attack on the enemy, or
> things like that, because they are too technical to be funny to the general
> population.
>
> Also, don't forget, if this is to be a sitcom (SITuation COMedy), it must
> be funny. Have real jokes that make people laugh. Puns about System V /bin/sh
> usually won't make even a Linux geek laugh :(
>
> I liked the Linus Torvalds sketch, it was actually pretty funny if you know
> who Linus Torvalds is (or at least understand that he's supposed to be someone
> Really Important).
>
> Other small notes:
> * You have stuff like "$( ... )", "grep hello *", "Enlightened trademark" -
>   how are these going to be spoken out without sounding ridiculous?

Enlightened trademark was removed in the CVS. And "grep hello star" and
"dollar parenthesis".

> * The idiom is "I wouldn't touch ... with a ten foot pole". Don't add "long",
>   and don't make it meters. If you don't want to use imperial measurements,
>   don't, but don't use this idiom either.
>

I omitted the long, and made a joke out of the meters.

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish

> --
> Nadav Har'El                        |         Saturday, Aug 3 2002, 25 Av 5762
> nyh@...             |-----------------------------------------
> Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |If you tell the truth, you don't have to
> http://nadav.harel.org.il           |remember anything.
>
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> hackers-il-unsubscribe@egroups.com
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>



----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish        shlomif@...
Home Page:         http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
Home E-mail:       shlomif@...

"Let's suppose you have a table with 2^n cups..."
"Wait a second - is n a natural number?"

This is a rough sketch of a document I wrote. I am posting it here for you
review and comments. Flame away!

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish



I'd like to give some advice to Microsoft. As we all know, Windows is
losing market share, and Microsoft did not earn more money this year
than it did the last. I do not claim that they should open source their
technologies. I don't think they should. But here's what I think they
should do.

1. Respect your users. Hold the BSA; Oppose UCITA and friends; and start
thinking of why people like Linux better, regardless of its possible
technological superiority. That's right: freedom _as in free speach_.

Microsoft cannot adhere to Stallman's strict policy, but it doesn't need to.
What it should do is make sure you talk people to pay for their software
instead of threatening to imprison them (fear does not work.
Friendliness does.[1]), give them their money back if they request it (you sort
out the OEM deals), and treat them as your second best asset after your
workers. They are.

2. Make Windows a better Linux. By including, porting and maintaining
free software. Including GPLed one. My friend thinks that the fact that
the Win32 API lacked (and still does) crucial UNIXish features, was
because Microsoft wanted to have a for over the UNIX-derived competition.

Well, these days are gone. If a program, or a simple script, that runs on
Linux needs something that is only available for UNIXes, its developer
may not bother trying to port it to Windows. Some people go even further
and restrict themselves to Linux alone, because they don't know what
to expect in other UNIX systems. If Windows want to win at this battle,
it must make sure it has everything Linux has and more.

3. The GPL is not your enemy. I generally don't qualify licenses
(including proprietary ones) as moral or immoral. A license is ammoral,
because a person needs not accept it. Those long EULAs with absurd claims
are a different issue, but they are still not immoral.

I don't like the GPL. I kept every software I wrote and was given the choice
of the license under a Public Domain license such as Pure PD, BSD or
MIT X11. The GPL has a long FAQ, a quiz and has been the topic of countless
flame-wars. I am not aware of the BSD License FAQ or the BSD License Quiz,
and that's because you're allowed to do whatever you want with it.

Nevertheless, it is possible and safe to port GPL-based programs to Windows.
While Microsoft cannot take a GPLed work and commercialize it or make use
of its code for its own products, it can safely make their systems more
popular and robust by distributing such programs.[2]

4. The Palladium Script would make Windows Unusable for Power Users, who
know the names of a zillion obscure shareware programs by heart. They
will take the completely non-gurus with them to the promised land of Linux
and MacOS X. (hint to Apple: Three Buttons+ScrollWheel Mice[3])

It's not a good way to make more money. It's a braindead suicide.

5. Port your software to Linux (on your free time, but soon). Microsoft
can survive even if Linux takes over.[4] But I strongly recommend
against using a Win32 emulation layer. No-one will like it, and it
will hurt you badly in the long run. I would not suggest a complete
re-write, but instead a gradual encapsulation of the internals into
their own domain, while using portable abstraction libraries to write
once and compile everywhere.

6. Create Windows Versions of Powerful Linux Features. ( preferably
compatible). Windows is getting better, but Linux is still miles ahead in
many areas. And the open-source world is not standing still either. (or have
you visited Freshmeat or Sweetcode lately?)


7. Good Luck! Smart people need it less.


What's missing? Revealing the source. It helps, but is not a panacea. Some
open-source projects have notorious security records. Some commercial
offerings are known as very secure and reliable. I think the source code is
not really an asset for a company. More of a state variable. It's there, but
you should not be too possesive about it. If the source code of WinXP is
posted on Usenet, Microsoft would not be hurt a bit. I'm sure the ReactOS
people already have better code for the parts they wrote so far, and the
internals of Microsoft would interest them, but would not be critical enough
to stop them. And Wine is in a much better state than ReactOS, and was told
that the only thing holding them up is some Microsoft patents on the Win32
API.

As for open specifications and protocols - always a good idea. And please
don't add anti-GPL clauses into its EULA. As for the American Government
sorting Microsoft out: seriously, Microsoft is not half as bad as the
American Government. I actually admire them, and could think of very few
things the American Government did right in the past 100 years.
And Microsoft got a lot of things right or at least partially right.


[1] - The Nazi Regime was depicted as a friendly regime instead of a regime
of terror. Microsoft is increasingly seen as a regime of terror. I have met
only one guy who was a full Microsoft junkie in my life, and he later turned
into Chemistry instead of Computing. He may have converted to UNIX by now.

[2] - For the record, the copyrights owner may choose to exempt a program
from the GPL. One cannot depend on it, as he may hold very radical views.

[3] - A one-button mouse is a very bad design decision. Many users like to
use the mouse exclusively and having to press keyboard keys to emulate mouse
buttons is very inconvenient. The one button mouse is a Macintosh childhood
disease - get rid of it ASAP.

[4] - We are not getting rid of Microsoft that easily. They can dominate
the commercial market in a Linux-based world. What we can do is change
the rules of the game.




----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish        shlomif@...
Home Page:         http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
Home E-mail:       shlomif@...

"Let's suppose you have a table with 2^n cups..."
"Wait a second - is n a natural number?"

On Sun, Aug 04, 2002, Shlomi Fish wrote about "[hackers-il] Some Advice for
Microsoft (revision 1)":
> don't add anti-GPL clauses into its EULA. As for the American Government
> sorting Microsoft out: seriously, Microsoft is not half as bad as the
> American Government. I actually admire them, and could think of very few
> things the American Government did right in the past 100 years.

Hmm, let's see:
	 * 1911: Rockefeller's Standard Oil broken up according to the 1890
           Sherman Act (the most important anti-trust suit ever).
	 * 1920: The 19th amendment (the "Susan B. Anthony Amendment") allowing
	   women to vote.
	 * The "New Deal", 1933-1935, letting the U.S. pass the great depression
	   relatively-unharmed, when other countries like Germany and Italy
	   were being destroyed from within by maniacs with crazy plans.
	 * 1941: Entering the 2nd world war and saving the entire human race.
	   Over 400,000 Americans lost their lives in that war, mainly for
           saving Europe, Asia and Africa, not America.
	 * The Marshall Plan, 1947. No third world war in Europe!
	 * The 24th amendment (the right to vote shall not be abridged by
	   failure to pay any tax), ratified by all states except Virginia
	   by 1964.
	 * 1969: An American (Neil Armstrong) was the first human to ever
	   walk the moon. This is just an example of the huge investments
	   the Americans goverment have made in high technology, which will
	   later make them the leading country in the world designing
	   computers, software, medicine, and other sophisticated products.
	 * 1973: Nixon and Kissinger meat Golda Meir, and agree to airlift
	   supply of arms to Israel keeping it from collapsing or using it's
	   (supposedly available) nuclear weapons during the Yom Kippur war.

I'm sure other people with better knowledge of American history than mine
can come up with a few other good things the American government did over
the last 100 years ;)

Obviously, there's also a similar list of *bad* things they did in the last
century...

--
Nadav Har'El                        |           Sunday, Aug 4 2002, 26 Av 5762
nyh@...             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |We could wipe out world hunger if we knew
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |how to make AOL's Free CD's edible!

On Sun, 4 Aug 2002, Nadav Har'El wrote:

> On Sun, Aug 04, 2002, Shlomi Fish wrote about "[hackers-il] Some Advice for
Microsoft (revision 1)":
> > don't add anti-GPL clauses into its EULA. As for the American Government
> > sorting Microsoft out: seriously, Microsoft is not half as bad as the
> > American Government. I actually admire them, and could think of very few
> > things the American Government did right in the past 100 years.
>
> Hmm, let's see:
>  * 1911: Rockefeller's Standard Oil broken up according to the 1890
>           Sherman Act (the most important anti-trust suit ever).

I don't really consider this a good thing because I'm not sure Standard
Oil was abusive. And even if it were, there would have been better things
to do than break it. Anti-trust is a scratch for the itch of not having
Laissez-Faire Capitalism, where monopolies cannot be abusive.

Check:

http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/libgates.html

>  * 1920: The 19th amendment (the "Susan B. Anthony Amendment") allowing
> 	  women to vote.

True. A good thing.

>  * The "New Deal", 1933-1935, letting the U.S. pass the great depression
> 	  relatively-unharmed, when other countries like Germany and Italy
> 	  were being destroyed from within by maniacs with crazy plans.

I'm not sure the new deal helped in anything. If only it made things
worse.

>  * 1941: Entering the 2nd world war and saving the entire human race.
> 	  Over 400,000 Americans lost their lives in that war, mainly for
>           saving Europe, Asia and Africa, not America.

True.

>  * The Marshall Plan, 1947. No third world war in Europe!

I don't know the details, but True.

>  * The 24th amendment (the right to vote shall not be abridged by
> 	  failure to pay any tax), ratified by all states except Virginia
> 	  by 1964.

True.

>  * 1969: An American (Neil Armstrong) was the first human to ever
> 	  walk the moon. This is just an example of the huge investments
> 	  the Americans goverment have made in high technology, which will
> 	  later make them the leading country in the world designing
> 	  computers, software, medicine, and other sophisticated products.

Whatever. In an LFC, private enterprise would have conquered space much
faster.

>  * 1973: Nixon and Kissinger meat Golda Meir, and agree to airlift
> 	  supply of arms to Israel keeping it from collapsing or using it's
> 	  (supposedly available) nuclear weapons during the Yom Kippur war.
>

True.

> I'm sure other people with better knowledge of American history than mine
> can come up with a few other good things the American government did over
> the last 100 years ;)
>
> Obviously, there's also a similar list of *bad* things they did in the last
> century...
>

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish

> --
> Nadav Har'El                        |           Sunday, Aug 4 2002, 26 Av 5762
> nyh@...             |-----------------------------------------
> Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |We could wipe out world hunger if we knew
> http://nadav.harel.org.il           |how to make AOL's Free CD's edible!
>
>
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> hackers-il-unsubscribe@egroups.com
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>



----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish        shlomif@...
Home Page:         http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
Home E-mail:       shlomif@...

"Let's suppose you have a table with 2^n cups..."
"Wait a second - is n a natural number?"

So in order to replenish his supply of illustrious pseudo-Latin insults, I
am taking over the honor of introducing him to the following Web page:

     http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/dec/essay.criticize.html

                                              --- Omer
There is no IGLU Cabal.  We are still looking for a nomination for the
Official Flamer post.
WARNING TO SPAMMERS:  at http://www.zak.co.il/spamwarning.html

David Wheeler is the author of SLOCCount and an open-source analyst. He
wrote the article "The Most Important Software Innovations":

http://www.dwheeler.com/innovation/innovation.html

I read this article or at least scanned through it, and I can tell that I
was quite disappointed. Wheeler eliminated many important innovations that
seemed very critical to me, and a lot of minor, but important innovations
are missing.

Another factor that is not taken into effect, is integrating innovations
into larger innovations, or simply borrowing them and encapsulating them
while making them more usable. [1] Sure, Microsoft did invent too many
things, and KDE and GNOME borrowed many concepts from Windows or
Macintosh. (KDE can even emulate the three other systems) Does it make
them bad?

It is possible that this article was written as an anti-thesis to
Microsoft's theme of "The Freedom to Innovate". But I don't think it's a
very good anti-thesis.

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish


[1] - Joel Spolsky has an article, "In Defense of the not-Invented Here
Syndrome"



----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish        shlomif@...
Home Page:         http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
Home E-mail:       shlomif@...

"Let's suppose you have a table with 2^n cups..."
"Wait a second - is n a natural number?"

> -----Original Message-----

> I read this article or at least scanned through it, and I can
> tell that I
> was quite disappointed. Wheeler eliminated many important
> innovations that
> seemed very critical to me, and a lot of minor, but important
> innovations
> are missing.

While the list is far from complete, I thought it was pretty good.

Some things bothered me though.
Do you consider refactoring an inovation? Its just a name for something we
were doing for years. If I wrote a good book about "Debugging", would this
be an innovation as well?

> Another factor that is not taken into effect, is integrating
> innovations
> into larger innovations, or simply borrowing them and
> encapsulating them
> while making them more usable. [1] Sure, Microsoft did invent too many
> things, and KDE and GNOME borrowed many concepts from Windows or
> Macintosh. (KDE can even emulate the three other systems) Does it make
> them bad?

We need to seperate "innovation" from "good implementation". Both are good
and important, but they are not the same thing.
The first product that made good use of Reg-Exps is imporant, but it doesn't
belong in the innovation list. The idea of "reg-exps" is the innovation.

Of course, your definitions of "innovation" may vary (and it seems like they
do)

I remember reading in (IIRC) "Programming Pearls" that from the time binary
search was invented, it took several years until the first correct
implementation appeared.
Scary, isn't it?

On Tue, Aug 06, 2002, Shlomi Fish wrote about "[hackers-il] Article: "The Most
Important Software Innovations" by David A. Wheeler":
>
> David Wheeler is the author of SLOCCount and an open-source analyst. He
> wrote the article "The Most Important Software Innovations":
>
> http://www.dwheeler.com/innovation/innovation.html

Does anyone know if this is the same Prof. David Wheeler who invented
Block Sorting (the algorithm behind bzip2) when working in Digital's
SRC (Systems Research Center, in Palo Alto)? [1]

Answering myself (!), I am guessing probably not, because it isn't mentioned
on his homepage, and because the guy who invented Block Sorting is supposed
to be a D. J. Wheeler, not a D. A. Wheeler... Oh, well, I guess it is a
different guy after all.

Block-Sorting David Wheeler's coauthor, Mike Burrows, is another interesting
guy. Besides coinventing that algorithm, he also was one of the two guys
who started the Altavista project in Digital, and the guy who wrote Digital's
"third degree" tools (similar to purify, valgrind, etc.).

[1] search for SRC's Research Report #124, from May 10th, 1994, or I can
send it to anyone who wants it.

--
Nadav Har'El                        |          Tuesday, Aug 6 2002, 28 Av 5762
nyh@...             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |Corduroy pillows - they're making
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |headlines!

On Tue, Aug 06, 2002, Shlomi Fish wrote about "[hackers-il] Article: "The Most
Important Software Innovations" by David A. Wheeler":
> I read this article or at least scanned through it, and I can tell that I
> was quite disappointed. Wheeler eliminated many important innovations that
> seemed very critical to me, and a lot of minor, but important innovations
> are missing.

Another strange thing is that on some issues he writes several "innovations"
but in other issues he writes none.

For example, in 1965 supposedly semphores were invented, and in 1974
monitors. People who learned distributed programming on various machines
and languages know that these are just two examples of synchronization
in distributed programming. Is it really so important to list them both?

He then goes on to list two encryption algorithms, RSA and D-H. What about
DES, by the way? Until a few years ago, DES was probably the most widely
used symmetric encryption algorithm...

What about compression algorithms? Huffman trees? Lempel-Ziv?

In adition to "word processor", what about typesetting? Such as troff, TeX,
or things that came before them?

And what about other hardware besides the mouse? The CRT monitors replacing
the teletypes (printers), the Tektronix 4014, the first dot-mapped displays?
Laser printers? Local-area-network solutions like Ethernet and AT&T's
Datakit? Magnetic tape and Hard disks replacing paper-tape-punch and Holerith
cards?

What about the invention of "file systems" and directory heirarchies?

I guess that there are lot more that can be written there... From reading
that list, you'd think that nobody did anything in the 90's besides making
up pompous C++ programming techniques. And what resulted from these techniques?
Yes, that's right: Microsoft's software. Halleluja :)

--
Nadav Har'El                        |          Tuesday, Aug 6 2002, 28 Av 5762
nyh@...             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |Unix is simple, but it takes a genius to
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |understand its simplicity.

On Tue, Aug 06, 2002 at 05:38:45PM +0300, Nadav Har'El wrote:
> He then goes on to list two encryption algorithms, RSA and D-H. What about
> DES, by the way? Until a few years ago, DES was probably the most widely
> used symmetric encryption algorithm...

Is DES really an innovation, or is it just a more refined implementation
of millenia-old ideas? Please correct me if I'm wrong here, but it was
common at first because it was the standard, not because it was the best,
and is considered secure today mostly because it's been around for so
long and not because of it being particularly innovative.

Assymmetrical encryption, on the other hand, really IS an innovation,
probably the most important innovation in cryprography since the invention
of the field and arguably the mathematical advancement that had the largest
economical/social impact in the 20th century. And while are probably dozens
of viable symmetrical encryption algorithms with countless variations on the
theme, the few and unvarying asymmetrical althorithms that we have are much
more important individually.

On Fri, 7 Aug 1970, Adi Stav wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 06, 2002 at 05:38:45PM +0300, Nadav Har'El wrote:
> > He then goes on to list two encryption algorithms, RSA and D-H. What about
> > DES, by the way? Until a few years ago, DES was probably the most widely
> > used symmetric encryption algorithm...
>
> Is DES really an innovation, or is it just a more refined implementation
> of millenia-old ideas? Please correct me if I'm wrong here, but it was
> common at first because it was the standard, not because it was the best,
> and is considered secure today mostly because it's been around for so
> long and not because of it being particularly innovative.
>
> Assymmetrical encryption, on the other hand, really IS an innovation,
> probably the most important innovation in cryprography since the invention
> of the field and arguably the mathematical advancement that had the largest
> economical/social impact in the 20th century. And while are probably dozens
> of viable symmetrical encryption algorithms with countless variations on the
> theme, the few indunvarying asymmetrical althorithms that we have are much
> more important individually.

The novel idea (dated from the 1970-s) is that your symmetric cipher does
not have to be good enough to resist an attacker with infinite computing
resources. Rather, that the attacker is limited to "resonable"
(polynomial) time. DES is not worth much in the information-theoretic
model.

--
Tzafrir Cohen
mailto:tzafrir@...
http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir

My own EWD memory:
The high school which I attended was LIDA - the high school near the Givat
Ram campus of Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
After school, I could often be found in the Computer Science library,
reading books and magazines.
I read a lot of stuff by EWD at the time.  The thing which I remember to
have been noteworthy about his writings:   the care which he lavished on
crafting and polishing his concepts - the exact meaning of semaphores,
etc.
I have no doubt that if it were not for his contributions to Computer
Science, I would have been much worse programmer than I am.
                                              --- Omer
WARNING TO SPAMMERS:  at http://www.zak.co.il/spamwarning.html

Included below is a makefile I use to build the site for Freecell Solver.
It's the most complex makefile I constructed by hand until todate.

The following caveats are in order:

1. It will only work with GNU Make on a GNU system.

2. It is intended for internal use. (it may burn your system, run out of
memory, cause a nuclear world war, etc.)

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish

############################


HOSTNAME = $(shell hostname)

ifeq ($(HOSTNAME),vipe.technion.ac.il)
	 VIPE = 1
endif

ifdef BERLIOS
	 ifdef VIPE
		 D = $(HOME)/progs/fcs/berlios-site
	 else
		 D = /var/www/html/fc-solve-berlios
	 endif
	 WML_FLAGS = -DBERLIOS=BERLIOS
else
	 ifdef VIPE
		 D = $(HOME)/public_html/freecell-solver/
	 else
		 D = /var/www/html/fc-solve
	 endif
	 WML_FLAGS =
endif
#D = /home/httpd/html/ip-noise

IMAGES_PRE1 = $(shell cd src && (ls *.tar.gz *.zip *.patch *.css *.png))
IMAGES = $(addprefix $(D)/,$(IMAGES_PRE1))

# WML_FLAGS = -DBERLIOS=BERLIOS

WML_FLAGS += --passoption=2,-X

HTMLS = $(D)/index.html $(D)/download.html $(D)/links.html $(D)/don_woods.html
$(D)/features.html $(D)/old-news.html $(D)/book.html

ARC_DOCS = $(D)/README $(D)/USAGE $(D)/ChangeLog $(D)/TODO $(D)/AUTHORS

INCLUDES_PROTO = std/logo.wml
INCLUDES = $(addprefix src/,$(INCLUDES_PROTO))

SUBDIRS_WITH_INDEXES = $(D)/win32_build $(D)/win32_build/bootstrap
$(D)/win32_build/dynamic $(D)/win32_build/static

SUBDIRS = $(SUBDIRS_WITH_INDEXES)

INDEXES = $(addsuffix /index.html,$(SUBDIRS_WITH_INDEXES))

IMAGES += $(addprefix $(D)/win32_build/,bootstrap/curl.exe bootstrap/build.bat
static/zip.exe static/unzip.exe dynamic/fcs.zip)

all : $(SUBDIRS) $(HTMLS) $(IMAGES) $(RAW_SUBDIRS) $(ARC_DOCS) $(INDEXES)

$(SUBDIRS) :: % :
	 @if [ ! -e $@ ] ; then \
		 mkdir $@ ; \
	 fi

RECENT_STABLE_VERSION = $(shell ./get-recent-stable-version.sh)

$(ARC_DOCS) :: $(D)/% : src/freecell-solver-$(RECENT_STABLE_VERSION).tar.gz
	 tar -xOzf $< freecell-solver-$(RECENT_STABLE_VERSION)/$(notdir $@) > $@

src/win32_build/dynamic/fcs.zip:
src/freecell-solver-$(RECENT_STABLE_VERSION).tar.gz
	 mkdir t
	 cd t && \
	 tar -xzvf ../$<; \
	 cd free* &&       \
	 zip -r ../../$@ * ; \
	 cd ../../ && \
	 rm -fr t

$(HTMLS) :: $(D)/% : src/%.wml src/.wmlrc template.wml $(INCLUDES)
	 cd src && wml $(WML_FLAGS) -DFILENAME="$(notdir $@)" $(notdir $<) > $@

$(IMAGES) :: $(D)/% : src/%
	 cp -f $< $@

$(RAW_SUBDIRS) :: $(D)/% : src/%
	 rm -fr $@
	 cp -r $< $@

# Build index.html pages for the appropriate sub-directories.
$(INDEXES) :: $(D)/%/index.html : src/% gen_index.pl
	 perl gen_index.pl $< $@




----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish        shlomif@...
Home Page:         http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
Home E-mail:       shlomif@...

"Let's suppose you have a table with 2^n cups..."
"Wait a second - is n a natural number?"

Some people know how make fun of themselves, and write funny stuff when asked
for a biography. One example I just found is in Rob Pike's "Acme: A User
Interface for Programmers" (http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/doc/93/1-03.ps.gz).
He writes:

   "Rob Pike, well known for his appearances on "Late Night with David
    Letterman", is a also a member of Technical Staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories
    in Murray Hill, New Jersey, where he has been since 1980, the same year
    he won the Olympic silver medal in Archery. In 1981 he wrote the first
    bitmap window system for Unix systems, and has sense written ten more.
    With Bart Locanthi he designed the Blit terminal; with Brian Kernighan
    he wrote The Unix Programming Environment. A shuttle mission nearly
    launched a gamma-ray telescope he designed. He is a Canadian citizen
    and has never written a program that uses cursor addressing."

I wonder if all these amazing things are true, or it's just a joke...

Another funny is Stallman's 1983 (http://www.stallman.org/#humorous%20bio):

   "I was built at a laboratory in Manhattan around 1953, and moved to the
    MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab in 1971. My hobbies include affection,
    international folk dance, flying, cooking, physics, recorder, puns,
    science fiction fandom, and programming; I magically get paid for doing
    the last one. About a year ago I split up with the PDP-10 computer to
    which I was married for ten years. We still love each other, but the world
    is taking us in different directions. For the moment I still live in
    Cambridge, Massachusetts, among our old memories. "Richard Stallman" is
    just my mundane name; you can call me "RMS".

Anybody know of other examples? :)

P.S. yes, this posting is yet another example of my wacky world of wild
associations ;) Reading about E. Dijkstra death, I got reminded of the
first time I heard of him, or actually saw his face (see mention in
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/doc/85/face.ps.gz). From there, I somehow
got dragged into browsing some of Rob Pike's articles, and then I even
found an apparently unrelated "Dykstra" (sheibadel lechaim arukim),
in http://www.bell-labs.com/user/dwd/5620faq.html. That bell-labs.com site
sure has a never-ending amount of interesting information...

--
Nadav Har'El                        |         Thursday, Aug 8 2002, 30 Av 5762
nyh@...             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |Martin Luther King said "I have a dream",
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |not "I have a plan".

On Thu, Aug 08, 2002, Nadav Har'El wrote about "[hackers-il] funny biographies":
>   "Rob Pike, well known for his appearances on "Late Night with David
>...
> I wonder if all these amazing things are true, or it's just a joke...

I did a little more surfing in http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/who/rob/, where
that funny biography is repeated, and at least some of it is beginning to
make sense. In his bibliography, the first article he wrote is listed as:

   R. Pike, White Light Observation of a Solar Flare, J. Roy. Ast. Soc. Can.,
   Vol. 68, pp. 330, 1974.

So both the "shuttle mission" and the "Canadian" parts may be reasonable,
the second probably more reasonable than the first.
It appears that until 1982, his main (paid?) research was in physics. See
also http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/who/rob/robs2.jpg

According to http://www.infoplease.com/ipsa/A0874804.html, Pike did *not*
win any olympic silver medal in archery in 1980 (!).

The only evidence of Pike appearing on Letterman was the relatively famous
1990 email from Dennis Ritchie (see http://www.unixica.com/html/trk.html)
which claims:
    "Ritchie is the only one [from Ritchie, Kernighan and Thompson] who has
     met five people who have appeared on David Letterman (Penn, Teller, Rob
     Pike, Mayor Koch, and the guy who raised the biggest hog in Ohio)".

http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/labscam.html has the story of Ritchie
meeting Penn and Teller, Pike's friends. Also, in an interview with Penn
http://www.sincity.com/penn-n-teller/wired-penn.html, one can even read:
    '"Give me 30 or 40 more IQ points and I'd be right there alongside Rob,"
     he says, referring to Rob Pike, one of his best friends. ("Rob and I are
     stupidly close.") Pike also happens to be a "scary-smart" computer
     scientist at Bell Laboratories, AT&T's research lab and patent mill,
     across the Hudson River in New Jersey.'
The Penn interview then continues to describe that "labscam" incident,
where Pike, Ritchie and the magicians Penn & Teller played a practical joke
on their (Pike and Ritchie's) boss Arno Penzias. By the way, for people
without a Physics background, Arno Penzias is a Nobel Prize laureate, for
his discovery of the 3-kelvin background radiation which "proved" the
big-bang theory).

I couldn't find online any more direct evidence of Pike appearing on Letterman.

By the way, try Pike's cheesecake:
http://www.lysator.liu.se/etexts/recept/us/cheesecake-1.html

A slightly more meaningful (and more recent) contribution of his is his
pessimistic article "Systems Software Research is Irrelevant" - see HTML
version in http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~ejones/writing/systemsresearch.html

--
Nadav Har'El                        |         Thursday, Aug 8 2002, 30 Av 5762
nyh@...             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |Microchips: what's left at the bottom of
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |the bag when it reaches you.

There was a boycott that year, but I think there was some alternate event where
he could have won something.

-----Original Message-----
From: Nadav Har'El [mailto:nyh@...]
Sent: Thursday, August 08, 2002 3:25 PM
To: hackers-il@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [hackers-il] funny biographies

According to http://www.infoplease.com/ipsa/A0874804.html, Pike did *not*
win any olympic silver medal in archery in 1980 (!).
**********************************************************************
This email and attachments have been scanned for recognized contextual
characteristics by PortAuthority Server to SafeGuard privileged or sensitive
information. Vidius, Inc. We value information.

"Nadav Har'El" <nyh@...> writes:

> According to http://www.infoplease.com/ipsa/A0874804.html, Pike did *not*
> win any olympic silver medal in archery in 1980 (!).

The 1980 Summer Olympics (held in Moscow) were boycotted by many
Western countries (because of the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afganistan;
Salt Lake City was luckier in 2002). The USA certainly didn't take
part, and probably neither did Canada. Canada certainly didn't win any
medals, according to

http://www.80s.com/Entertainment/Sports/Olympics/1980/summer.html#final

IIRC there was an alternative event in Fountainbleau, France.  Maybe
he took part in that? I could not find info on that from one quick
Googling.

Another possibility: a Bell Labs (or ATT?) Olympics. ;-)

--
Oleg Goldshmidt | ogoldshmidt@...
"IBM is a pretty big company." [W. Gates]

On Thu, 8 Aug 2002, Orr Dunkelman wrote:

> The code is closed under some legal agreements, so I cannot release it,
> neither send gcc a bug-report.

The possibility that gcc is somehow sensitive to the legal status of
the code in question does not have to be ruled out.

How this might happen (DISCLAIMER:  this is a far-fetched wild
speculation):
There may be certain C/C++ language phrases, which are not generally
known, and which were discovered by some programmer and incorporated only
in proprietary code.  Those phrases would then become known only to
programmers, who saw the code under NDA.  Those phrases would trigger bugs
in gcc compiler.  Due to the proprietary nature of the code in question,
those bugs would not be reported to the gcc developers.

In other words, coding styles used solely in proprietary code might
trigger bugs in gcc.  Hence, the sensitivity of gcc to the legal status of
the code which it tries to compile.
                                              --- Omer
There is no IGLU Cabal.  Once it was found that software packages have
telepathic abilities of their own, people ran away from computers.
WARNING TO SPAMMERS:  see at http://www.zak.co.il/spamwarning.html

Joel Spolsky is now pulling an effort to translate his site into other
languages. To help with this good cause, I translated "Things you must
never do - Part I" into Hebrew. This is the article in which he claims
that re-writing entire codebases from scratch is usually a Bad Idea.

Check:

http://vipe.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/things.html

and the original article in English can be found here:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

I sent the translation to Joel, but have not received a reply yet.
Technical comments about the translation are welcome. And this probably
would erupt a flame-war.

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish        shlomif@...
Home Page:         http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
Home E-mail:       shlomif@...

"Let's suppose you have a table with 2^n cups..."
"Wait a second - is n a natural number?"

Check:

http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/css_descramble-php.txt

The author thanks for the effort. The URL he points for trying out the
code is working and is very fast in my ADSL connection.

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish



----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish        shlomif@...
Home Page:         http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
Home E-mail:       shlomif@...

"Let's suppose you have a table with 2^n cups..."
"Wait a second - is n a natural number?"

> http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/css_descramble-php.txt
>
> The author thanks for the effort. The URL he points for trying out the
> code is working and is very fast in my ADSL connection.

If I understand correctly, this guy took the javascript deCSS and used PHP
that creates a webpage that contains that javascript.

This is clearly a symptom of too much free time.

Chen.

On Fri, 9 Aug 2002, Chen Shapira wrote:

>
> > http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/css_descramble-php.txt
> >
> > The author thanks for the effort. The URL he points for trying out the
> > code is working and is very fast in my ADSL connection.
>
> If I understand correctly, this guy took the javascript deCSS and used PHP
> that creates a webpage that contains that javascript.
>

I thought so too at first, but that is not the case. The entire code is
wrapped in a <?php ... ?> block and contains dollars. No, the DeCSS
algorithm is implemented in PHP.

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish

> This is clearly a symptom of too much free time.
>
> Chen.
>
>
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> hackers-il-unsubscribe@egroups.com
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>



----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish        shlomif@...
Home Page:         http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
Home E-mail:       shlomif@...

"Let's suppose you have a table with 2^n cups..."
"Wait a second - is n a natural number?"

Instead of translating 'stole their lunch' to גנב את ארוחת הצהריים it is
better to use a Hebrew expression, like גנב את הבכורה.

-- Arik

Shlomi Fish wrote:
>
> Joel Spolsky is now pulling an effort to translate his site into other
> languages. To help with this good cause, I translated "Things you must
> never do - Part I" into Hebrew. This is the article in which he claims
> that re-writing entire codebases from scratch is usually a Bad Idea.
>
> Check:
>
> http://vipe.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/things.html
>
> and the original article in English can be found here:
>
> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
>
> I sent the translation to Joel, but have not received a reply yet.
> Technical comments about the translation are welcome. And this probably
> would erupt a flame-war.
>
> Regards,
>
>         Shlomi Fish
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Shlomi Fish        shlomif@...
> Home Page:         http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
> Home E-mail:       shlomif@...
>
> "Let's suppose you have a table with 2^n cups..."
> "Wait a second - is n a natural number?"
>
>
>
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> hackers-il-unsubscribe@egroups.com
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>

On Sat, 10 Aug 2002, Arik Baratz wrote:

> Instead of translating 'stole their lunch' to גנב את ארוחת הצהריים it is
> better to use a Hebrew expression, like גנב את הבכורה.
>

Hi Arik!

I tried several ways to view this Hebrew part and was not successful. Can
you write an HTML file with it or write it in English letters.

BTW, Joel said "ate their lunch".

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish

> -- Arik
>
> Shlomi Fish wrote:
> >
> > Joel Spolsky is now pulling an effort to translate his site into other
> > languages. To help with this good cause, I translated "Things you must
> > never do - Part I" into Hebrew. This is the article in which he claims
> > that re-writing entire codebases from scratch is usually a Bad Idea.
> >
> > Check:
> >
> > http://vipe.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/things.html
> >
> > and the original article in English can be found here:
> >
> > http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
> >
> > I sent the translation to Joel, but have not received a reply yet.
> > Technical comments about the translation are welcome. And this probably
> > would erupt a flame-war.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> >         Shlomi Fish
> >
> >
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Shlomi Fish        shlomif@...
> > Home Page:         http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
> > Home E-mail:       shlomif@...
> >
> > "Let's suppose you have a table with 2^n cups..."
> > "Wait a second - is n a natural number?"
> >
> >
> >
> > To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> > hackers-il-unsubscribe@egroups.com
> >
> >
> >
> > Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
>
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> hackers-il-unsubscribe@egroups.com
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>



----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish        shlomif@...
Home Page:         http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
Home E-mail:       shlomif@...

"Let's suppose you have a table with 2^n cups..."
"Wait a second - is n a natural number?"