One day after the scheduled time of Knuth's earthshaking announcement
(http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/06/29/2233219/Knuth-Plans-Earthshaking-Announ\
cement-Wednesday?art_pos=2),
I didn't see yet any articles or news items telling what was the
announcement about.  Even Google News drew blanks.

Can anyone provide us with an URL to an item which tells what was the
announcement about?
                                     Thanks,
                                          --- Omer


--
Palestinians did not firmly and vocally and strongly denounce the
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(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/24/german-youths-attack-jewi_n_623922.htm\
l) but rather supported the attack, even though it is yet another proof why Jews
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> One day after the scheduled time of Knuth's earthshaking announcement
>
(http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/06/29/2233219/Knuth-Plans-Earthshaking-Announ\
cement-Wednesday?art_pos=2),
> I didn't see yet any articles or news items telling what was the
> announcement about.  Even Google News drew blanks.
>
> Can anyone provide us with an URL to an item which tells what was the
> announcement about?

It was a joke.

http://twitter.com/jeyjey

In accordance with its annual tradition, the Israeli Free and
Open Source Software community will hold the August Penguin conference
( http://august.penguin.org.il/ ) under the auspices of the Hamakor
non-profit organisation  ( http://www.hamakor.org.il/ ).

This year the conference will take place on Friday, 6 August 2010,
starting at 08:30 in the morning, in the Avner building of the
Weizmann Institute in Rehovoth, Israel. Entrance to the conference costs
50 New Israeli Sheqels (ILS), while members and friends of
Hamakor and the Israeli Internet Society (ISOC) are not required to pay.
(Note that youth under the age of 18, soldiers, and students can opt
to join Hamakor as friends or members for the entrance fee.)

So what is going to take place in the conference?

* http://august.penguin.org.il/schedule - talks.

* Giving the "Hamakor Prize".

* http://www.bookcrossing.com/ - Book Crossing stands.

* http://august.penguin.org.il/keysign - a key-signing party.

* Photo shoot-out.

* Nice atmosphere and friendly geeks.

---

Everyone is welcome to come to the conference. Please make the payments
on the Internet before the event.

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Just a few corrections:

On Saturday 10 Jul 2010 12:45:59 Shlomi Fish wrote:
> In accordance with its annual tradition, the Israeli Free and
> Open Source Software community will hold the August Penguin conference
> ( http://august.penguin.org.il/ ) under the auspices of the Hamakor
> non-profit organisation  ( http://www.hamakor.org.il/ ).
>
> This year the conference will take place on Friday, 6 August 2010,
> starting at 08:30 in the morning, in the Avner building of the

This is the Ebner building (though it's spelt the same in Hebrew - "אבנר").

> Weizmann Institute in Rehovoth, Israel. Entrance to the conference costs
> 50 New Israeli Sheqels (ILS), while members and friends of
> Hamakor and the Israeli Internet Society (ISOC) are not required to pay.

There is no free entry for members of ISOC this year. Hamakor friends and
members still get a free entry.

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish

> (Note that youth under the age of 18, soldiers, and students can opt
> to join Hamakor as friends or members for the entrance fee.)
>
> So what is going to take place in the conference?
>
> * http://august.penguin.org.il/schedule - talks.
>
> * Giving the "Hamakor Prize".
>
> * http://www.bookcrossing.com/ - Book Crossing stands.
>
> * http://august.penguin.org.il/keysign - a key-signing party.
>
> * Photo shoot-out.
>
> * Nice atmosphere and friendly geeks.
>
> ---
>
> Everyone is welcome to come to the conference. Please make the payments
> on the Internet before the event.

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See:

http://www.junauza.com/2010/07/how-to-make-windows-faster-than-linux.html

This is via Dovix on Whatsup.org.il:

http://www.whatsup.org.il/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&p=347970

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish

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----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: Rakudo Star - a useful, usable, "early adopter" distribution of Perl
6
Date: Thursday 29 July 2010, 15:23:35
From: "Patrick R. Michaud" <pmichaud@...>
To: perl6-language@..., perl6-compiler@..., perl6-users@...,
parrot-dev@...

On behalf of the Rakudo and Perl 6 development teams, I'm happy to
announce the July 2010 release of "Rakudo Star", a useful and usable
distribution of Perl 6.  The tarball for the July 2010 release is
available from <http://github.com/rakudo/star/downloads>.

Rakudo Star is aimed at "early adopters" of Perl 6.  We know that
it still has some bugs, it is far slower than it ought to be, and
there are some advanced pieces of the Perl 6 language specification
that aren't implemented yet.  But Rakudo Perl 6 in its current form
is also proving to be viable (and fun) for developing applications
and exploring a great new language.  These "Star" releases are
intended to make Perl 6 more widely available to programmers, grow
the Perl 6 codebase, and gain additional end-user feedback about the
Perl 6 language and Rakudo's implementation of it.

In the Perl 6 world, we make a distinction between the language
("Perl 6") and specific implementations of the language such as
"Rakudo Perl".  "Rakudo Star" is a distribution that includes
release #31 of the Rakudo Perl 6 compiler [1], version 2.6.0 of
the Parrot Virtual Machine [2], and various modules, documentation,
and other resources collected from the Perl 6 community.  We
plan to make Rakudo Star releases on a monthly schedule, with
occasional special releases in response to important bugfixes or
changes.

Some of the many cool Perl 6 features that are available in this
release of Rakudo Star:
   * Perl 6 grammars and regexes
   * formal parameter lists and signatures
   * metaoperators
   * gradual typing
   * a powerful object model, including roles and classes
   * lazy list evaluation
   * multiple dispatch
   * smart matching
   * junctions and autothreading
   * operator overloading (limited forms for now)
   * introspection
   * currying
   * a rich library of builtin operators, functions, and types
   * an interactive read-evaluation-print loop
   * Unicode at the codepoint level
   * resumable exceptions

There are some key features of Perl 6 that Rakudo Star does not
yet handle appropriately, although they will appear in upcoming
releases.  Thus, we do not consider Rakudo Star to be a
"Perl 6.0.0" or "1.0" release.  Some of the not-quite-there
features include:
   * nested package definitions
   * binary objects, native types, pack and unpack
   * typed arrays
   * macros
   * state variables
   * threads and concurrency
   * Unicode strings at levels other than codepoints
   * pre and post constraints, and some other phasers
   * interactive readline that understands Unicode
   * backslash escapes in regex <[...]> character classes
   * non-blocking I/O
   * most of Synopsis 9
   * perl6doc or pod manipulation tools

In many places we've tried to make Rakudo smart enough to inform the
programmer that a given feature isn't implemented, but there are
many that we've missed.  Bug reports about missing and broken
features are welcomed.

See http://perl6.org/ for links to much more information about
Perl 6, including documentation, example code, tutorials, reference
materials, specification documents, and other supporting resources.

Rakudo Star also bundles a number of modules; a partial list of
the modules provided by this release include:
   * Blizkost
       - enables some Perl 5 modules to be used from within Rakudo Perl 6
   * MiniDBI
       - a simple database interface for Rakudo Perl 6
   * Zavolaj
       - call C library functions from Rakudo Perl 6
   * SVG and SVG::Plot
       - create scalable vector graphics
   * HTTP::Daemon
       - a simple HTTP server
   * XML::Writer
       - generate XML
   * YAML
       - dump Perl 6 objects as YAML
   * Term::ANSIColor
       - color screen output using ANSI escape sequences
   * Test::Mock
       - create mock objects and check what methods were called
   * Math::Model
       - describe and run mathematical models
   * Config::INI
       - parse and write configuration files
   * File::Find
       - find files in a given directory
   * LWP::Simple
       - fetch resources from the web

These are not considered "core Perl 6 modules", and as module
development for Perl 6 continues to mature, future releases
of Rakudo Star will likely come bundled with a different set
of modules. Deprecation policies for bundled modules will be
created over time, and other Perl 6 distributions may choose
different sets of modules or policies.  More information about
Perl 6 modules can be found at http://modules.perl6.org/.

Rakudo Star also contains a draft of a Perl 6 book -- see
<docs/UsingPerl6-draft.pdf> in the release tarball.

The development team thanks all of the contributors and sponsors
for making Rakudo Star possible.  If you would like to contribute,
see <http://rakudo.org/how-to-help>, ask on the perl6-compiler@...
mailing list, or join us on IRC #perl6 on freenode.

Rakudo Star releases are created on a monthly cycle or as needed
in response to important bug fixes or improvements.  The next planned
release of Rakudo Star will be on August 24, 2010.

[1] http://github.com/rakudo/rakudo
[2] http://parrot.org/

-----------------------------------------
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Freecell Solver - http://fc-solve.berlios.de/

God considered inflicting XSLT as the tenth plague of Egypt, but then
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Hi all,

I've finished setting up a new page in my site:

http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/COBOL-the-New-Age-Programming-Language/

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish

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God considered inflicting XSLT as the tenth plague of Egypt, but then
decided against it because he thought it would be too evil.

Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .

On Sunday 01 August 2010 11:45:26 Arik Baratz wrote:
> On 1 August 2010 05:18, Shlomi Fish <shlomif@...> wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I've finished setting up a new page in my site:
> >
> >
> > http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/COBOL-the-New-Age-Programming-Langu
> > age/
>
> Hi Shlomi
>
> There's a 4th gen language called CSP that used COBOL as its back end
> (you'd generate COBOL from CSP and then compile). Where I worked they
> wrote in PL/1 when they needed low level access, not actual COBOL.

I see.

>
> I don't really understand the point of the page, it's not like you'd find
> people disagreeing with you or people you need to convince. The call to
> action at the end of the page is really redundant if all you want to do is
> make a look-at-how-stupid-people-used-to-be page, which for the most part
> it is.

Well, it's just a parody page (notice the URL and the breadcrumbs trail, etc.)
and in part I also wanted to parody the hypey pages of modern programming
languages. For example, http://www.python.org/ had a photo of a NASA Astronaut
saying "NASA uses Python", so I parodied it as "NASA uses COBOL" (which is
true).

>
> My opinion is that the fact that many people used it gives it some merit.
> Perhaps it was the best they had or perhaps aliens in a parallel dimension
> used their brain rays to make everyone think that COBOL is a great idea
> (and the aliens switched to C++ after). But considering today's
> alternatives, if you haven't figured out that COBOL is not the right
> language for your new project, no amount of words is going to convince you
> otherwise.
>

I did not try to convince people to ditch COBOL, just to have some fun at its
expense.

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish

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God considered inflicting XSLT as the tenth plague of Egypt, but then
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----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: [Israel.pm] Fwd: [Perl Jobs] Catalyst / Enlightened Perl Software
Engineer (onsite), Israel, Tel Aviv
Date: Thursday 24 June 2010, 08:34:24
From: Scott Weisman <sweisman@...>
To: Perl in Israel <perl@...>

I thought this list might be interested in the job listing I just received.

Scott

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Perl Jobs <jobs-admin@...>
Date: Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 12:05 AM
Subject: [Perl Jobs] Catalyst / Enlightened Perl Software Engineer (onsite),
Israel, Tel Aviv
To: jobs@...


Online URL for this job: http://jobs.perl.org/job/12420

To subscribe to this list, send mail to jobs-subscribe@....
To unsubscribe, send mail to jobs-unsubscribe@....

Posted: June 22, 2010

Job title:
Catalyst / Enlightened Perl Software Engineer

Location: Israel, Tel Aviv

Travel: 0%

Terms of employment: Hourly employee

Hours: Full time

Onsite: yes

Description:
Startup web company seeks developer to join project from embryonic stage.
CEO has successful Internet companies under his belt.

Seeking a self-motivating team-player who thinks that design is at least as
important as implementation, who writes readable OO code and who sees tasks
through to the end.

Must be based in Israel and willing to work at our office in Tel Aviv.

Required skills:
Perl
Catalyst
Moose
DBIx::Class

Desired skills:
Apache Solr
CSS
AJAX
JQuery
PostgreSQL
Linux sysadmin (Debian)

Contact information at:
http://jobs.perl.org/job/12420#contact

-----------------------------------------
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----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: Fwd: Delivering the ACTA petition: Ask others to sign before Thursday
Date: Wednesday 18 August 2010, 11:29:08
From: Shlomi Fish <shlomif@...>
To: "Linux-IL" <linux-il@...>

ACTA is a bad international treaty that may affect many of us. Please sign the
petition against it and help spread the word.

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish

----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: Delivering the ACTA petition: Ask others to sign before Thursday
Date: Tuesday 17 August 2010, 22:00:29
From: "Free Software Foundation" <info@...>
To: Shlomi Fish <shlomif@...>

A month ago, we published a statement against ACTA
(http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/acta/acta-declaration) and asked for
your signatures in support. Over 3,000 of you joined us in calling on
ACTA negotiators to either dramatically change the agreement or drop
it all together.

We did this because ACTA attacks the rights of computer users
(http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/acta/why-acta-declaration) around the
world and threatens, in a disguised way, to punish Internet users with
disconnection if they are accused of sharing. It also requires
countries to prohibit software that can break Digital Restrictions
Management (DRM), also known as digital handcuffs.

Yesterday was the start of a week-long series of ACTA meetings in the
US between country representatives. This makes now a key time to
ensure our voices are heard. As Dr. Michael Geist said yesterday,
"With the US on its home turf and having pushed for an accelerated
schedule...the next week could decide the fate of ACTA."

This Thursday, August 19th, we will be delivering the petition -- with your
signatures -- to the ACTA negotiators.

Thank you for signing! Please help spread the word so we can get as
many signatures as possible before Thursday!

--
Sent from the Free Software Foundation, 51 Franklin Street
Fifth Floor
Boston, MA 02110-1335
United States


To unsubscribe, visit
http://crm.fsf.org/index.php?q=civicrm/mailing/optout&reset=1&jid=3&qid=328&h=03\
e5715d0eb6b9df.

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Why I Love Perl - http://shlom.in/joy-of-perl

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Hi all,

on Twitter I mentioned that I've started porting my Black Hole Solitaire
solver from Perl to C and that it will hopefully make it faster:

http://twitter.com/shlomif/status/22027561541

Chen replied thusly:

http://twitter.com/gwenshap/status/22031112275

{{{
Why go to all the effort without knowing what causes your code to be slow and
how C can help? Don't guess when you can measure!
}}}

So here is my reply: my code is not slow as Perl code goes, but it still often
takes many seconds to solve a given deal of Black Hole Solitaire. As I'd like
to run the solver on a range of deals in order to collect some statistics, I
expect the Perl code to be too slow for that. The code is algorithmic and I'd
expect that executing the bytecode by the Perl 5 backend to incur a large
amount of overhead.

My code is very minimal as it is, and it's not very complicated or
sophisticated so I expect a conversion to C to yield great speed (and possibly
also memory consumption) benefits.

For more information see my:

* http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Optimizing_Code_for_Speed

I've replied to it here instead of on Twitter, because I didn't have enough
character quota to express myself properly. (Also I thought it may be of
interest to the list.).

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish

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God considered inflicting XSLT as the tenth plague of Egypt, but then
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Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .

> So here is my reply: my code is not slow as Perl code goes, but it still often
> takes many seconds to solve a given deal of Black Hole Solitaire. As I'd like
> to run the solver on a range of deals in order to collect some statistics, I
> expect the Perl code to be too slow for that. The code is algorithmic and I'd
> expect that executing the bytecode by the Perl 5 backend to incur a large
> amount of overhead.


So your code is CPU bound and you are counting on the C optimizer to
reduce the CPU usage?

The reason I'm drilling down into the details is that I've been
interested in the question of "In what conditions can a program be
made faster by switching to a different language?" and you seem to
have a perfect test case :)

In my world code is usually made faster by making it do less physical
IO or less logical IO (aka use less memory) or by resolving
concurrency issues. All those problems are rarely solved by switching
to a different language - although some folks seem to solve
concurrency problems by using Erlang.

I'm curious how it works in other areas that I'm less familiar with.
Could you post benchmarks? Do you have profiler output for your
program (i.e. where time is spent before and after)?

Chen

Resending because YahooGroups rejected my message (silently).

On Thursday 26 August 2010 21:40:37 Gwen Shapira wrote:
> > So here is my reply: my code is not slow as Perl code goes, but it still
> > often takes many seconds to solve a given deal of Black Hole Solitaire.
> > As I'd like to run the solver on a range of deals in order to collect
> > some statistics, I expect the Perl code to be too slow for that. The
> > code is algorithmic and I'd expect that executing the bytecode by the
> > Perl 5 backend to incur a large amount of overhead.
>
> So your code is CPU bound and you are counting on the C optimizer to
> reduce the CPU usage?

I believe that is the case. I have very little I/O there - mostly just parsing
the input, and outputting the solution to the STDOUT.

>
> The reason I'm drilling down into the details is that I've been
> interested in the question of "In what conditions can a program be
> made faster by switching to a different language?" and you seem to
> have a perfect test case :)

Heh, yes.


>
> In my world code is usually made faster by making it do less physical
> IO or less logical IO (aka use less memory) or by resolving
> concurrency issues. All those problems are rarely solved by switching
> to a different language - although some folks seem to solve
> concurrency problems by using Erlang.

Memory (RAM/Swap/etc.) access may be a huge factor in the run-time of the
program, but it is also something that C is much better at.

>
> I'm curious how it works in other areas that I'm less familiar with.
> Could you post benchmarks?

Yes. Here you go:

1. For PySolFC board No. 26464608654870335080 (which takes a very short time):

{{{
shlomif:$module$ time perl -Ilib ./scripts/black-hole-solve
t/data/26464608654870335080.bh.board.txt
Solved!
2D
3H
2S
3C
4H
5S
6D
7C
8C
9H
TH
9S
8S
9D
TC
JS
QC
KS
QH
JC
TS
JH
QS
KH
AC
2C
3D
4S
5D
6S
7D
6H
5C
4C
3S
2H
AD
KC
AH
KD
QD
JD
TD
9C
8D
7S
8H
7H
6C
5H
4D

real    0m0.568s
user    0m0.538s
sys     0m0.028s
}}}

2. For PySol FC board No. 2:

{{{
shlomif:$module$ make_pysol_freecell_board.py -F -t 2 black_hole | time perl
-Ilib ./scripts/black-hole-solve -
Solved!
KH
AD
2H
3D
2S
3S
4H
5S
6C
7D
8H
7H
8D
9D
TH
JH
TS
9S
8S
9H
TC
JC
QS
KS
AH
2D
3H
4D
5H
4S
5D
6S
7C
6H
7S
8C
9C
TD
JS
QH
JD
QC
KD
QD
KC
AC
2C
3C
4C
5C
6D
8.79user 0.07system 0:08.92elapsed 99%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata
131120maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+8266minor)pagefaults 0swaps
}}}

As you can see it takes much longer.

> Do you have profiler output for your
> program (i.e. where time is spent before and after)?
>

Well, I haven't converted my program to C yet. I'm attaching the
Devel::NYTProf output of:

$ perl -d:NYTProf -Ilib ./scripts/black-hole-solve 2.bh.board.txt

As one can see from it, most of the time is spent in the loop, with one
statement taking over 1 second in the total run (as they are run many times).
The amount of code spent on reading the board or outputting the solution is
very small.

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish

> Chen

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Hi all,

On Saturday 28 August 2010 22:21:10 Shlomi Fish wrote:
> Resending because YahooGroups rejected my message (silently).
>
> On Thursday 26 August 2010 21:40:37 Gwen Shapira wrote:
> > > So here is my reply: my code is not slow as Perl code goes, but it
> > > still often takes many seconds to solve a given deal of Black Hole
> > > Solitaire. As I'd like to run the solver on a range of deals in order
> > > to collect some statistics, I expect the Perl code to be too slow for
> > > that. The code is algorithmic and I'd expect that executing the
> > > bytecode by the Perl 5 backend to incur a large amount of overhead.
> >
> > So your code is CPU bound and you are counting on the C optimizer to
> > reduce the CPU usage?
>
> I believe that is the case. I have very little I/O there - mostly just
> parsing the input, and outputting the solution to the STDOUT.
>
> > The reason I'm drilling down into the details is that I've been
> > interested in the question of "In what conditions can a program be
> > made faster by switching to a different language?" and you seem to
> > have a perfect test case :)
>
> Heh, yes.
>
> > In my world code is usually made faster by making it do less physical
> > IO or less logical IO (aka use less memory) or by resolving
> > concurrency issues. All those problems are rarely solved by switching
> > to a different language - although some folks seem to solve
> > concurrency problems by using Erlang.
>
> Memory (RAM/Swap/etc.) access may be a huge factor in the run-time of the
> program, but it is also something that C is much better at.
>
> > I'm curious how it works in other areas that I'm less familiar with.
> > Could you post benchmarks?
>

Now that I've converted the program to C here is a Perl 5-vs.-C benchmark:

{{{
shlomif[black-hole]:$trunk/black-hole-solitaire$ sudo_renice time bash
benchmark-perl.bash
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
127.13user 1.44system 2:07.96elapsed 100%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata
3785616maxresident)k

0inputs+216outputs (0major+519908minor)pagefaults 0swaps
shlomif[black-hole]:$trunk/black-hole-solitaire$ sudo_renice time bash
benchmark-c.bash
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
4.98user 0.31system 0:05.30elapsed 99%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata
454512maxresident)k
0inputs+320outputs (0major+113825minor)pagefaults 0swaps
shlomif[black-hole]:$trunk/black-hole-solitaire$
}}}

So, the C solver runs at 5.3 seconds while the Perl solver takes 2:07.96
minutes (~24 times slower).

Just for the record, here are the benchmarking scripts I've used:

[benchmark-perl.bash]
#!/bin/bash
export PATH="$HOME/apps/perl/modules/local/bin:$PATH"
export PERL5LIB="$HOME/apps/perl/modules/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.10.1/"
     (
         seq 1 20
     ) |
     (
         while read T ; do
             echo "$T"
             make_pysol_freecell_board.py -F -t "$T" black_hole |
             black-hole-solve - > "$T".results.txt
         done
     ) 2>&1 | tee -a black_hole_range_LOG
[/]

[benchmark-c.bash]
#!/bin/bash
export PATH="/home/shlomif/apps/test/bhs/bin/:$PATH"
     (
         seq 1 20
     ) |
     (
         while read T ; do
             echo "$T"
             make_pysol_freecell_board.py -F -t "$T" black_hole |
             black-hole-solve - > "$T".results.txt
         done
     ) 2>&1 | tee -a black_hole_range_LOG
[/]

On one occasion I was told that perl 5 was 100 times slower than C, and on a
different one that it was 1,000 times slower, and 24 times slower is still a
very dramatic difference.

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish

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Hi Amit,

On Saturday 25 September 2010 17:01:39 Amit Aronovitch wrote:
> When reading (or editing) long textual documents, especially source code,
> you always have to compromise between viewing larger portions of the code
> at once (to get a wider context), and having reasonably sized fonts (long
> documents take long time to read, you wouldn't want to stress your eyes
> too much).
> Since code typically has a fixed, relatively short, line width, there is no
> point in stretching your window horizontally. Only vertical stretching
> helps, and you are limited by the height of your screen.
> The problem became even worse with the increased popularity of wide-screens
> (for a given screen area, you now get shorter screens, and either have to
> settle for less lines to display or strain the eyes with smaller sized
> fonts).
>
> I think that the best way to use screen area in modern wide screens would
> be to "cut" a "virtual" tall window into two halves and have them
> displayed side by side. In other words, have a wide window for your
> editor, which is horizontally split in two halves, where lines from the
> top of the right pane scroll into the bottom of the left pane and vice
> versa.
> In Emacs I can simulate a crude version of this by carefully resizing and
> scrolling two views of the same buffer, such that the top line of the right
> view follows the bottom line of the left one
> (see screenshot in  http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6960989/horizsplit.png ), and
> then turn on "scroll-all-mode" to force synchronized scrolling.
> However:
> * It is a bit tricky to set up.
> * You loose synchronization if you try to scroll beyond the top or bottom
> of your file.
> * I would like to have a single scrollbar, cursor and status line, rather
> than two (which is confusing).
> (well, maybe there is a special emacs mode for what I want, but I do not
> know of such).
>
> Now the question:
> Is such a feature available in your favorite editor? Do you know of a good
> editor that supports this?

It is available in Vim using the ":setlocal scrollbind" feature (tried it now
and it works). Here is the excerpt from the Vim FAQ about it:

{{{
10.8. How do I scroll two or more buffers simultaneously?

You can set the "scrollbind" option for each of the buffer to scroll them
simultaneously.

For more information, read

     :help 'scrollbind'
     :help scroll-binding
     :help 'scrollopt'
}}}

And Vim/gvim is my favourite editor. :-)

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish

> If not - should not be hard to implement - maybe somebody already wrote
> such an extension...
>
>     AA

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Hi all,

we've discussed Joel-on-Software before here, so I thought you would be
interested.

There will be a presentation of FogBugz software in the Ayalon Mall featuring
Joel "on Software" Spolsky.

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish

----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: [JoelOnSoftware] I'm speaking in 20 cities...
Date: Wednesday 29 September 2010, 17:16:45
From: "Joel On Software" <joel@...>
To: shlomif@...

Thanks to the hard work of the Fog Creek team, including ten great summer
interns, we have just released amazing new upgrades to FogBugz and Kiln.

To kick off the new releases, we're about to start another one of our famous
world tours. I'll be flying to 20 (yes, twenty) different cities to demo
FogBugz 8.0 to anyone who wants to come see it in person.

As an added bonus, I'm also going to bring along someone from the Kiln team to
teach a one-hour course in distributed version control. If you've been
wondering what all the fuss is about, this is a painless way to learn the
basics of the new generation of version control.

The events are absolutely free but they always fill up right away, so go sign
up now!

    http://worldtour.fogbugz.com/

--
Joel Spolsky
joel@...
--

To unsubscribe instantly, or change your email address:

http://whatcounts.com/u?id=67D294F930493D91A300131DE02812E58065842C0DFC0923

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   Fog Creek Software, Inc.
   55 Broadway, 25th Floor
   New York NY 10006
   (866) 364-2733
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Hi all,

in this message I will review three programming books that I've read lately:

* Programming Pearls, 2nd Edition.
* More Programming Pearls (1st and only edition so far).
* The Algorithm Design Manual

so without further ado, here are the book reviews:

1. Programming Pearls, 2nd edition:
-----------------------------------

[info]
* Author: Jon Bentley ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Bentley ).

* Book homepage: http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/pearls/ .

* On Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Pearls-2nd-Jon-Bentley/dp/0201657880

* 2nd edition published on 1999.
[/info]

I've heard this book mentioned in several places before buying it and reading
it and it did not disappoint me. This book is absolutely great, with
interesting coverage of interesting programming and computer-science related
topics. It has an extensive discussion of optimising code, which I could
appreciate, being very interested in it (see:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Optimizing_Code_for_Speed ), and lots of other
interesting stuff. The second edition was updated for modern times, and feels
quite fresh.

Bentley mentions in the book that he has written a book called "Writing
Efficient Programs" which is now out-of-print with some techniques for
optimising code, and I was saddened to hear that it is indeed out-of-print,
because I'd like to read it. He does give a summary of the book in an
appendix,
though.

The book contains many exercises, which I've mentally thought about most, but
did not actually solve using the computer. But otherwise, I enjoyed reading
this
book and can wholeheartedly recommend it.

2. More Programming Pearls:
---------------------------

[info]
* Author: Jon Bentley ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Bentley ).

* Book homepage: http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/pearls/ .

* On Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/More-Programming-Pearls-Confessions-Coder/dp/0201118890

* 1st and only edition published on 1988.
[/info]

A fellow Perl programmer bought me this book as a birthday present from my
Amazon.com wishlist because I put it there out of wishing to read the followup
to the previous book in the series which I enjoyed. However, this book failed
to meet my expectations, and I found it disappointing.

It does not have the same focus on topics that interest me and instead
contains
many different topics. While not being completely bad, it fails to live up
to the promise of the previous book, and I cannot really recommend it. The
book is also showing its age.

The book page on Amazon.com contains a single 3-star review for "More
Programming Pearls" which kinda summarises my feelings.

3. The Algorithm Design Manual:
-------------------------------

[info]
* Author: Steven Skiena .

* Book homepage: http://www.algorist.com/ .

* On Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Algorithm-Design-Manual-Steven-Skiena/dp/1848000693/

* 2nd edition published on 1988.
[/info]

I received this book as an Amazon.com gift, after I placed it
on my wishlist by inspiration from that of someone else. For some reason, it
was sent to an old address of ours, which caused some confusion because
I did not recall ordering it. But eventually I realised what happened.

Based on the cover of the book, and its title, I got a somewhat different
idea of what it would be about than what it really was, and thought it would
be very technical and formal. However, this preconception was dis-spelled
shortly after I started reading it. In fact, the book is quite offbeat,
without
too many rigorous proofs.

The book is split into two parts. In the first one, we are given an overview
of the theory behind algorithms with a lot of sample code in C, and with
some "take home lessons", detailed "war stories", where the author explains
how he implemented the topics covered in his work as a professor and algorithm
designer, some exercises, and an accessible coverage of the subject. Some
topics I liked there was the coverage of simulated annealing, his explanation
of why he found genetic algorithms lacking, and the coverage of back tracking,
all of which were missing from my formal computer science education.

The second part of the book was nicknamed "The Hitchhiker's Guide to
Algorithms" and provides an overview of the various algorithms and their
implementations available for the various algorithmic objectives. While also
good and enlightening, my only qualm is that it took me a long time to read,
and by that time, felt the first part of the book was a distant memory.

Still, this is a good book with good coverage of the subject of algorithmics.
I can recommend it.

==================

I'll be happy to answer any questions you have.

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish

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<rindolf> She's a hot chick. But she smokes.
<go|dfish> She can smoke as long as she's smokin'.

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hi guys,
     let's make long guffings short:There are great open courses we can
learn a lot from MIT OCW.I think a correct order in study curve is
that begin with SICP[1] and 6.087[2](writing in C).Lisp and C giving
you a different postions to looking at a same thing:The truth of
computational model.then get to know about relationship between OS and
programming languages itself(compilers) in metaphysical that it's
important as if a man who has a strong faith but need to understand
about hen and eggs which is came out at first time when SOMEONE
created the stuff.Speak straightforward,either you can write a OS[3]
when you got a compiler or you can write a compiler[4] when you got a
OS.

[1] 6.001 Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs:
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-001-str\
ucture-and-interpretation-of-computer-programs-spring-2005/

[2] 6.087 Practical Programming in C
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-087-pra\
ctical-programming-in-c-january-iap-2010/

[3] 6.828 Operating System Engineering
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-828-ope\
rating-system-engineering-fall-2006/index.htm

[4] 6.035 Computer Language Engineering (SMA 5502)
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-035-com\
puter-language-engineering-sma-5502-fall-2005/


And,I think we missd a heavily course that it's about multicore
programming[5].I think we are almostly using a computer(or a laptop)
with more than 1 core.do we get used to writing the frenk'in source
code for multicore environment?Probably we were not ready yet.This
course might be driven your intrinsically hacking passion in this
issues.The general solution for multicore we have heard of SMP a
lot.Another solution is called SMT which many cores in a chip and
every core takes own few excution threads in hardware-level
implementation.And...Play Stations 3's Cell CPU is that one it's also
cheaper than other high performance machine.That's why
hackers(University,military,research lab) would love to buy many PS3
then install the GNU/linux into it,and hacking multicore stuff on
it.IBM guys won the game console war by gave Sony a "advice" about
developing a new CPU---Cell.Ok,that's not a topic I wanna discuss
here.

as a hacker who are get involve in computer spheres.the contents of
those 5 course we need to hack them all,seriously.It may takes few
years.But it definitely worth it.

btw:if you are going to hack SICP,take a look at this guy's blog[6]

may LORD's hacking spirit guide us!!!

[5] 6.189 Multicore Programming Primer
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-189-mul\
ticore-programming-primer-january-iap-2007/

[6] Eliben's blog(he had already done all exceises)
http://eli.thegreenplace.net/category/programming/lisp/sicp/


--
GNU powered it...
GPL protect it...
God blessing it...

regards
Shawn

Hi all,

I recently finished working on a new document titled "How to Start
Contributing to or Using Open Source Software" intended to get more people
involved in the world of free and open source software (FOSS). You can find it
here:

http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/How_to_start_contributing_to_or_using_Op\
en_Source_Software

Short link: http://bit.ly/gkeXn5

Any comments, corrections or suggestions would be welcome.

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish

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Chuck Norris can make the statement "This statement is false" a true one.

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----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: [Israel.pm] TA.pm meeting (Jan 26th)
Date: Monday 17 Jan 2011, 19:11:41
From: sawyer x <xsawyerx@...>
To: Perl in Israel <perl@...>

Hi everyone!

We're continuing our monthly TA.pm meetings.
(http://telaviv.pm.org/)

The next meeting will be 9 days from today.

Date: *January 26th*.
Address: *Shenkar College, Anna Franck 12, Ramat Gan. Room 323*.
*6:30pm Get-together*
*7:00pm Talks
*
This meeting will try to focus on web development and will (as any meeting)
include both beginner talks and intermediate ones.
We will also start a tradition of exhibition! Module exhibition, that is.
Pick a module you want to exhibit and take 5 minutes to talk about it.
If you want to exhibit a module, you can talk to me privately (if you need a
laptop, or funny hats) or you can just step up in between talks.

This meeting we will enjoy the following talks:
- What the hell is web development? (Sawyer X)
A nice, easy, hopefully interesting, understandable introduction to web
development.
(beginner talk)
- The web stack (Ilan Arad)
A hands-on, discussion-oriented talk on advanced understanding of the web
stack, from server-side to client-side.
(advanced talk)

As always, there are a few good reasons to come to the Perl Mongers
meetings:
* Meeting more geek-minded people like yourself
* Learning new stuff, if you're a beginner
* Learning new stuff, if you're advanced
* Shlomi brings snacks!
* Laughs, jokes, fun, and anything else we can fake! :)

Please feel free (and do) invite anyone you want!

See you there!
Sawyer.

P.S.:
We already have a few talks scheduled for future talks, but we're ALWAYS
looking, so please, don't be afraid to suggest a talk, on anything, at any
level.
Two increments for early talk submitters!

P.P.S.:
Website will be updated shortly.

-----------------------------------------
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Hi Shawn,

sorry for the extremely late response.

On Thursday 09 Dec 2010 13:52:38 Shawn wrote:
> hi guys,
>     let's make long guffings short:There are great open courses we can
> learn a lot from MIT OCW.I think a correct order in study curve is
> that begin with SICP[1] and 6.087[2](writing in C).Lisp and C giving
> you a different postions to looking at a same thing:The truth of
> computational model.then get to know about relationship between OS and
> programming languages itself(compilers) in metaphysical that it's
> important as if a man who has a strong faith but need to understand
> about hen and eggs which is came out at first time when SOMEONE
> created the stuff.Speak straightforward,either you can write a OS[3]
> when you got a compiler or you can write a compiler[4] when you got a
> OS.
>

I'm not going to reply to your E-mail because it lacks good style which makes
it hard to read. Some offending things are:

1. No whitespace before and/or after punctuation.

2. Lack of proper capitalisation.

3. The paragraphs are too monolithic and the sentences appear to be too long.

I don't know if there's an open courseware university material about writing
in proper English style but there are many offline and online resources such
as:

1. http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html - may be a bit skewed towards
American English (in case you prefer Commonwealth English, you may need to
find something else.).

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style (found using a
Google search which as you know absolutely *loves* the wikipedia, so it may
not be good.).

These can go a long way into making your E-mails more coherent. Also search
for E-mail netiquette.

I'm sorry if I come across as a grammar/punctuation/netiquette nazi and as a
prescriptivist, but those conventions really make text easier to read and
understand. Almost all the good hackers (some may say great hackers) I respect
the most have a very good command of written English, and express themselves
clearly and coherntly. For some fun but serious discussion about that see:

http://shlomif.livejournal.com/53966.html - the "Grammar Nazis Conspiracy" -
also read all the comments especially those at the bottommost thread.

> btw:if you are going to hack SICP,take a look at this guy's blog[6]
>
> may LORD's hacking spirit guide us!!!
>

God is indeed a hacker, so hack on! But first hack your own English. This will
give you a much bigger long-range benefit than reading or watching all the
computer science courses in the world, because people will listen to you and
take you seriously.

Some of the effective ways I found to better learn English are:

1. Write. Write a lot. Start a blog. Write about interesting stories from your
past. Ask your readers to point to the issues in your text (also your code).
Maybe start specialised blogs for writing about a topic that interests you.

2. Read. Read a lot. Especially fine literature, though not too archaic. I
really like reading original and quality Children and Young Adult's Literature
in English (e.g: The Hobbit, The Treasure Island, E. Nesbit, Roald Dahl, Mary
Poppins, Sherlock Holmes, etc. - can't think of more right now.) There are
many public domain and freely distributable fiction online in Project
Gutenberg,

3. Pay attention to what you write and how you phrase yourself. Don't write
too hastily.

4. Chat with English speakers on IRC - I like Freenode for that and they have
an ##English channel, but other channels accept somewhat off-topicish
discussion, especially some #not-channels or channels like #perlcafe ,
#lispcafe or #perl-cats (sorry, I'm an old school Perler bastard), which are
intended solely for offtopic discussion.

5. Watch/listen to some films to see how people use the English language in
speech. There are many clips on YouTube and similar sites and you can learn a
lot from them. There are some larger scale videos available online, offline
and on torrents naturally.

6. Most importantly - remember that improving your language is hard work, but
it's also fun, because hard work is often fun, and rewarding and makes you
happy. The opposite of fun and pleasure in general is not necessarily work. If
people did not enjoy hard work for pleasure, then large scale operating
systems that are completely free-and-open-source-software such as GNU/Linux or
the *BSDs could not happen.

----

Finally, note that this advice was not directed to you in particular and is
universal. I also still make some mistakes in English and am oblivious to or
deliberately violating a lot of good style and best practices, but I'm trying
to learn. Sometimes there's the case of a colour of the bikeshed though:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law_of_Triviality

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish

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Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .

I want to develop a system, using an Arduino controller board.
However, I need the controller to respond also to the FFT of ambient
sounds.

So the system will have to include also a microphone and a DSP.

My requirements and budget are hobbyist level, so what is the
recommendation for a DSP or FFT processor which meets as many as
feasible of the following requirements:
1. Low unit price
2. Availability of a cheap development board
3. Availability of Free (or at least zero cost) development toolchain
4. Can be purchased off the shelf in a shop in Har Zion St., Tel Aviv.

Thanks,
--- Omer

--
Delay is the deadliest form of denial.    C. Northcote Parkinson
My own blog is at http://www.zak.co.il/tddpirate/

My opinions, as expressed in this E-mail message, are mine alone.
They do not represent the official policy of any organization with which
I may be affiliated in any way.
WARNING TO SPAMMERS:  at http://www.zak.co.il/spamwarning.html

Hi all,

The so-called "McQuary limit" for signatures says this:

http://www.answers.com/topic/mcquary-limit-computer-jargon

<quote>
[from the name of the founder of alt.fan.warlord; see warlording.] 4 lines of
at most 80 characters each, sometimes still cited on Usenet as the maximum
acceptable size of a sig block. Before the great bandwidth explosion of the
early 1990s, long sigs actually cost people running Usenet servers significant
amounts of money. Nowadays social pressure against long sigs is intended to
avoid waste of human attention rather than machine bandwidth. Accordingly, the
McQuary limit should be considered a rule of thumb rather than a hard limit;
it's best to avoid sigs that are large, repetitive, and distracting. See also
warlording.
</quote>

Now some people have taken the rule to its letter and put signatures only
under 4 lines. For example a typical signature (now quite old) by our Nadav
is:

<qoute>
Nadav Har'El                        |         Monday, Sep 6 2004, 20 Elul 5764
nyh@...             |-----------------------------------------
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |May you live as long as you want - and
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |never want as long as you live.
</quote>

I've been thinking that maybe such two-column and ASCII-art-bases signature is
not very accessible to people using screen-readers and/or Braille-devices
(e.g: people who are blind or otherwise sight-disabled.) and possibly has
other accessibility issues. And I've seen much worse signatures in the olden
days of Usenet.

Now, the format of my signature block is:

<block>
[Name]    [Homepage URL]
[Self-interetst resource that may be of Interest one line - now randomised ]
[Empty Line]
[Amusing quote - usually by myself or a friend - now also randomised.]
[Empty Line]
Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .
</block>

I think this is the most accessible solution, and the signature is still not
very long. I originally had the contact-me URL there as well, but figured out
that people can always find it on my home site.

Omer (Zak), as our resident accessibility expert, what are your views on this?

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish

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My opinions may seem crazy but they all make sense. Insane sense, but sense
nonetheless.

Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .

On Fri, 2011-03-04 at 14:48 +0200, Shlomi Fish wrote:
> I've been thinking that maybe such two-column and ASCII-art-bases signature is
> not very accessible to people using screen-readers and/or Braille-devices
> (e.g: people who are blind or otherwise sight-disabled.)

[... snipped ...]

> Omer (Zak), as our resident accessibility expert, what are your views on this?

On the face of it, your suggestion makes sense.  The drawback is that it
somewhat limits people's ability to express themselves artistically
(this is one of the excuses used by movie makers to avoid putting
captions in their movies - "visual clutter").

I think that people who read Braille can deal with .sigs (except for the
ASCII art part, which needs more "global view").

I suggest that you ask people with visual impairment for their
experiences with .sigs, and if they don't already have workarounds for
grokking .sigs.

--- Omer


--
In civilized societies, captions are as important in movies as
soundtracks, professional photography and expert editing.
My own blog is at http://www.zak.co.il/tddpirate/

My opinions, as expressed in this E-mail message, are mine alone.
They do not represent the official policy of any organization with which
I may be affiliated in any way.
WARNING TO SPAMMERS:  at http://www.zak.co.il/spamwarning.html

Hi Omer,

On Saturday 05 Mar 2011 04:40:30 Omer Zak wrote:
> On Fri, 2011-03-04 at 14:48 +0200, Shlomi Fish wrote:
> > I've been thinking that maybe such two-column and ASCII-art-bases
> > signature is not very accessible to people using screen-readers and/or
> > Braille-devices (e.g: people who are blind or otherwise sight-disabled.)
>
> [... snipped ...]
>
> > Omer (Zak), as our resident accessibility expert, what are your views on
> > this?
>
> On the face of it, your suggestion makes sense.  The drawback is that it
> somewhat limits people's ability to express themselves artistically
> (this is one of the excuses used by movie makers to avoid putting
> captions in their movies - "visual clutter").

Ah. :-(.

>
> I think that people who read Braille can deal with .sigs (except for the
> ASCII art part, which needs more "global view").
>
> I suggest that you ask people with visual impairment for their
> experiences with .sigs, and if they don't already have workarounds for
> grokking .sigs.

OK, I'll see if I can do that. Ori told me there's a mailing list for blind
(or otherwise visually disabled) Linux users (over at RedHat IIRC), but had a
problem that they are asking many questions there that are mundane technical
problems they run into with Linux. I'll see what I can do, though.

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish

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Shlomi Fish       http://www.shlomifish.org/
"The Human Hacking Field Guide" - http://shlom.in/hhfg

My opinions may seem crazy but they all make sense. Insane sense, but sense
nonetheless.

Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .

Hi all.

This is my reply to RMS after he reported some factual and phrasing comments
to some FOSS-related resources on my site, which may be of general interest to
this list.

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish

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Shlomi Fish       http://www.shlomifish.org/
First stop for Perl beginners - http://perl-begin.org/

<rindolf> I am not solvable. I am Turing hard.

Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .

Dear Dr. Stallman,

thanks for your E-mail. I apologise for any factual or spiritual errors in my
documents, and see below for my comments.

I also apologise for the fact that KMail is breaking the long URLs in the
quotes parts. This is due to a Qt 4 bug that is outside the control of the
KDE/KMail people, which most KMail users hope will be fixed soon. Note, that I
could view the original unbroken URLs fine when you sent them.

On Thursday 10 Mar 2011 01:03:20 Richard Stallman wrote:
> I'm unhappy with your article
> http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/foss-other-beasts/revision-2/foss-and-
> other-beasts.xml. In addition to the various problems you would imagine,
> here are some errors.
>
>      The Berkeley University forked its own version of AT&T UNIX and
> started re-writing parts of the code, and incorporating many changes of
> its own.
>      The original parts were licensed under the BSD license which is a
>      copyright
>      licence that is almost entirely Public Domain. The BSD system became
>      very
>      popular (perhaps even more than the AT&T one).
>
> Several errors there.
>
> I think "original" is the wrong word.  BSD was originally Unix from
> AT&T.

Yes, maybe it should be "new" parts. I'll correct it in a new version.

>
> Berkeley did not start releasing code under the original BSD license
> until the late 80s.  Before that, Berkeley's changes were proprietary
> and available only to AT&T licensees.

Ah, I see. It's good to know. I wasn't around at the time as I was born in
1977 and only started programming in 1987 using various dialects of BASIC for
the early PC machines, and was only fully introduced to the world of
UNIXes/POSIX and GNU only later on in about 1996 when I got a job for an early
web-design company. I recall thinking of prep.ai.mit.edu (= the old mirror for
GNU) as an interesting host from which I could download software in source
form and build it, which often proved to be useful, and was not aware of the
implications of the GPL and LGPL.

Anyway, I'll revise a future version of the article. I also hope to
incorporate there some of the material I wrote for this one:

http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/How_to_start_contributing_to_or_using_Op\
en_Source_Software

I realise you won't like the fact that I usually referred to free software as
"open source", and it's OK for you to be angry with me about that, but there
are some terms I consciously deviate with from the GNU "terms-to-avoid" page:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html

(While trying to comply with other terms.)

Let's just say that it's a known bug in our mutual relationship, and we'll
agree that you will be unhappy with that about me. You don't have to consider
me as a friend, but at least we can help both help each other in the cause of
promoting free software and similar free or at least redistributable cultural
works (e.g: artwork under one of the Creative Commons licences, etc.).

>
>      What Sun Microsystems initially did was actually take the BSD source
>      code,
>      diverge from it and distribute it without full access to the code.
>
> Note that this is little different from what Berkely was doing at the
> time.

Ah, yes, it is caused by what you said earlier. I'll revise the document in a
future revision, and also add some errata for the existing version.

>
>      To answer this threat, a new phenomenon sprang into existence: the
>      "free
>      software" movement, the GNU project and the copyleft licences, all led
>      by
>      one dynamic personality: Richard M. Stallman.
>
> That's not accurate.  My decision to develop GNU was not a response to
> what AT&T, Berkeley and Sun were doing.  First I decided to make a
> free operating system.  Then I decided to make it Unix-compatible, as
> a technical decision.  At that time, I had never used Unix, but I knew
> it was proprietary software.
>

I see. I'll correct it. Did you pick UNIX (instead of VMS, or other operating
systems that were popular at the time) due to the availability of the source
(although possibly under a non-free licence)? You also mentioned in a talk
you've given to free software enthusiasts in Israel, that you consciously made
a decision to make the GNU projects' C code only 32-bit instead of both 16-bit
and 32-bit because you predicted that 16-bit systems will die and 32-bit will
be the future (a prediction which turned out to be correct and wise.), even
though 32-bit computers back then (e.g: the various VAXen and IBM's S/360)
were still relatively uncommon. I forgot what I wanted to ask. :-)

>      Restrictive Integration by Other Code bases - GPL code can only be
>      linked
>      against code with free software licences that match some criteria.
> This property has been recently referred to as "viral".
>
> That term is insulting and false.  Please don't repeat it
> without explaining why it is false.
>

You are naturally right. I will say why it is not truly "viral", and why it
should be avoided. I should also note that I've heard little use of it in a
long time when talking to similar free software enthusiasts on various
Internet mediums, but may still mention it (with the natural caveat) out of
being a historical relic.

>      The incentive to restrict a software this way rather than following
> the traditional virtually public domain BSD licence, was to make sure that
> the
>      core GNU system would always remain free as well.
>
> The original BSD license did not exist yet, but other lax permissive
> licenses showed be the danger.  Specifically TeX.
>

Ah, fair enough. I'll mention it there. Lots of corrections to do.

>
>
>  http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/human-hacking/human-hacking-field-guide/r
> ms.html
>
>  more or less the same as "Open Source Software",
>
> That is backwards.  Free software came first; 15 years later, open source
> was coined as another name for it.

I agree. However, most people will be more familiar with the term "open
source" than with what is meant by free software. Maybe I'll rephrase the
necessary part from:

<quote>
In case you don't know, RMS is Richard M. Stallman. RMS was originally one of
the original MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory hackers. He coined the
term "Free Software" ("Free" as in "Free Speech"), which is more or less the
same as "Open Source Software", except for some semantic and historical
differences. He then went on to create the GNU Project, which has created a
great deal of open-source software which consists of a large part of modern-
day Linuxes now. (but is also available for other operating systems)
</quote>

Into:

<quote>
In case you don't know, RMS is Richard M. Stallman. He was one of the original
hackers in the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He also coined the term
"Free Software" ("Free" as "Free Speech") which describes the phenomenon and
culture we now know as "open source software", which is similar, except for
some semantic and historical differences. He then went on to create the GNU
project, in which a great deal of free software (or "open source" one if you
may) which makes up a large and integral part of modern-day Linux systems now.
(But is also available and commonly utilised in many other operating systems,
both UNIX-like and not so UNIX-like operating systems.)
</quote>

>
> 						  except for some
>  semantic and historical differences. He then went on to create the GNU
>  Project, which has created a great deal of open-source software which
>  consists of a large part of modern-day Linuxes now. (but is also
>  available for other operating systems)
>
> It is really annoying that you write about my work and call it "open
> source" so much.

Yes, see how I rephrased it above. I'm sorry that you feel I am doing you a
disservice by calling the packages of the GNU project "open-source". Like I
said, I don't find saying that free software packages are "open-source" is an
issue, because I don't feel (and I have good linguistics and semantic reasons
for that, though I'm sure you won't be convinced), it's a bad term to describe
that phenomenon. Anyway, I hope you'll be content with the rewrite, which will
be featured in "Version 2" of the story, which will incorporate some other
major changes I have in mind to the text and the plot. I will mention your
reservations to "Version 1" in
http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/human-hacking/conclusions/ (the Conclusions
and Reviews section), and may also revise the text in the first version
accordingly.

I hope you otherwise enjoyed reading the story "The Human Hacking Field Guide"
and found it entertaining.

---------------------

Thanks for all of your important comments, and I hope you'll have a fun and
constructive visit to Israel and to the Palestinian authority in Julyish.

All that put aside, I would appreciate it, if you can reply to my original E-
mail (attached to this message) regarding your opinion regarding "Not Fully-
Free Cultural/Artistic/Media Works" with respect to free software, because
many people on the Creative Commons mailing list and possibly elsewhere (as
well as myself) are interested in learning your opinion, which we'd like to
make public.

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish

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Shlomi Fish       http://www.shlomifish.org/
First stop for Perl beginners - http://perl-begin.org/

We don't know his cellphone number, and even if we did, we would tell you that
we didn't know it.

Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .

Hi Mr. Stallman,

first of all, thanks for coming to Israel again in the Summer, and thanks for
visiting the Palestinian authority as well, because they also could use some
encouragement and advocacy to use free software. I hope you'll enjoy your
visit and find it fruitful.

In any case, in this thread on the Creative Commons mailing list:

http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/cc-community/2011-March/006049.html

We've been speculating about your opinion (and the FSF's official stance)
about the licensing of non-software cultural/artistic/media works. As a
result, I would be happy if you can answer the following questions, which I
would like to share with the mailing list and possibly post them on one of my
weblogs (with your permission).

Here goes:

1. I know you believe that non-free, public, software (which Joel Spolsky
calls "shrinkwrap" software here -
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FiveWorlds.html ) that is not free or
even not entirely free, is illegitimate and immoral. However, do you believe
that in an ideal world, such software should be illegal?

Alternatively, do you think the law should allow non-free software to be
marketed (given some natural limitations on which restrictions would be held
as legal and valid.) and protected, while still allowing competition from free
software and naturaly advocacy against the use of non-free software?

2. Do you believe that one can prevent commercial use and commercial
redistribution (i.e: mass selling for a profit) of their otherwise publicly
available artwork? (Similar to the -nc variants of the Creative Commons
licences.)

3. Do you believe that one can completely prevent derivative works of one's
otherwise public artwork? (Similar to the -nd variants of the Creative Commons
licences.).

4. In this Slashdot.org feature:

http://developers.slashdot.org/story/05/01/09/191257/

you were quoted as saying that:

[quote]
What is the future of free software development for games? Is it possible?
Will the games ever equal or surpass their proprietary competitors? Why should
we care? After thoroughly researching the free and open source software model,
and interviewing both indie and free software game developers, author Matt
Barton decided that the future is indeed very bright. Stallman is quoted here
saying that game engines should be free, but approves of the notion that
graphics, music, and stories could all be separate and treated differently
(i.e., "Non-Free.")"
[/quote]

Can you confirm this?

----------------------------------

Please reply when you find the time for that, because we would be very
interested in knowing of your opinion.

Thanks again for all your work as part of the Free Software Foundation or
outside it, and I hope I'll be able to meet you again during your visit to
Israel assuming I won't be feeling under the weather.

Regards,

	 Shlomi Fish

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Shlomi Fish       http://www.shlomifish.org/
Stop Using MSIE - http://www.shlomifish.org/no-ie/

The difference between a good student and a bad student is that a bad student
forgets the material five minutes before the test, while a good student five
minutes afterwards.
     -- One of Shlomi Fish's Technion Lecturer

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