erroneous thoughts

I did not intend to write a Merry Christmas post, but heck, it beats the crap out of text messages (money and patience-wise), so here it goes:

The message: I wish you all a Merry Christmas, and a Happy, prosperous and full 2008,

The “postcard” (thanks to Miguel for this) (the message is Portuguese, but you all can guess what it says, right?): http://marcelomendes.eti.br/img/ubuntu-christmas-1024×768.png

And now for something completely different (Portuguese, and of last Christmas, but funny enough to be put here ): http://ya.chupa-mos.com/?artigo=169

“Abstract”:

WASHINGTON–The US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay has been caught conducting covert propaganda attacks on the internet. The attacks, exposed by government transparency group Wikileaks, include deleting detainees’ ID numbers from Wikipedia, the systematic posting of unattributed “self praise” comments on news organization web sites in response to negative press, boosting pro-Guantanamo stories on the internet news site Digg and even modifying Fidel Castro’s encyclopedia article to describe the Cuban president as “an admitted transexual” [sic].

Article: http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Wikileaks_busts_Gitmo_propaganda_team

Slashdot thread: http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/16/1842258&from=rss

It is the author’s very modest opinion that Wikipedia is an accurate and stable source of information for technical and scientific subjects, in particular for information that is widely established and accepted. But for (specially recent) historical and political issues, it’s use as an information source should be completely avoided. For these issues, printed and reviewed press should be used. While it is also liable to manipulation, it is much more difficult (and costly) to do so.

I never had anywhere near 3500 books in my house, but I have enough books to make properly sorting and organize them be a hell of a problem. But not in the way it was to these guys:

In March of 2006 my wife Mary and I owned about 3,500 books. We both have eclectic interests, voracious appetites for knowledge, and a great love of used bookstores. The problem was that we had no idea what books we had or where any of them were. We lost books all the time, cursed late into the night digging through piles for that one book we knew must be there, and even bought books only to find that we already owned them. There were books on random shelves, books on the floor, we were tripping over books when we walked up and down the stairs. In short, we had a mess.

The post linked details on their solution for the problem: a combination of hardware, software, and a lot patience. If I ever happen to find myself owning half of their books, I might do something similar, but likely without using proprietary software…

I first came across this image some years ago. Now I stumble on it again on this Slashdot thread: «Are you proud of your code?»

I was never really fond of software engineering (at least not in the way I was taught; that was one of the most obnoxious subjects I endured during college…) but I always found the image darkly amusing…

Moving on, among the tons of comments present in aforementioned thread, I found two of them very interesting, reason for which I am linking (and quoting) them here. The first one is about how (little) programmers usually think:

In my experience, not everybody dares to work this way. It is a bit embarrassing if your boss enters your office and you’re just leaning back in your chair, day after day. But on the other hand, if they wanted someone who would always seem busy, they hired the wrong person; they should have gone for a typist. Thinking is an important part of a programmer’s job.

The second one is about code comments:

I’ve met people of the agile variety who insist that well-written code needs no documentation: that if you carve your code up into small, tight, appropriately named classes and methods it becomes obvious what your code does and your code becomes “self-documenting”, and I’ve met people who won’t even look at code unless every single line is commented telling them precisely what it does, so “int i = a + 2;” has to have a comment above it saying “// create a signed 32-bit integer variable, i, and assign it two more than the value of a”.

Human brain is indeed curious in some ways…

It’s a shame that this web page does not elaborate on the details:

Understanding how randomly-moving objects arrive at a certain destination is no secret to scientists today. But no theory, until now, could predict the time it would take for an object to move between given addresses in a complex environment, like through the human body or the World Wide Web. Previous models only explained the passage of time when the event occurred in a homogenous environment, like in a vacuum or in a glass of water.

Could this mean we are going back to a Laplacian universe of sorts?

There you have it:

Sigh. If the terrorists haven’t won already, they probably deserve to. They don’t even have to take our freedom, we’re just selling it off a piece at a time.

The comment from where this quote came from is too bloated and childish (IMHO) to be taken seriously, but I though the phrase represents well an increasingly more common scenario in the US. BTW, this is the thread, which as its title reveals, deals with another idiotic attempt to stop «piracy» at the taxpayers’ expense.

EDIT: talking about /. quotes, you might also enjoy this… (if you haven’t read it already)

Slashdot has a thread on a online Q&A session by Bruce Schneier. The questions were asked by the public. They cover a wide range of issues, from security and privacy to online businesses and identity thefts. There are LOTS of links provided that further detail the issues around each Q&A.

I generally agree with the author’s perspective on many issues; one notable exception is wireless network security. When he was asked about the benefits of securing home WiFi networks, here’s Schneier’s answer:

I run an open wireless network at home. There’s no password, and there’s no encryption. Honestly, I think it’s just polite. Why should I care if someone on the block steals wireless access from me? When my wireless router broke last month, I used a neighbor’s [sic] access until I replaced it.

WoW! That was unexpected! Of course the guys who commented the article seized upon this:

“YIKES. Speaking of not being able to utter your words lightly. The problem is not that someone is stealing your wireless access, the problem is that a malicious intruder is potentially inside your firewall.”

My philosophy is to keep the network open and secure the hosts.

— Posted by Bruce Schneier

This is Schneier’s response to a reader who complained of one of the issues that arise by giving away your connection to everyone. There are, of course,other problems, referred to by other readers in other comments, most notably, the fact that you may be (even if only partially) liable for what a malicious user does using your unprotected connection. I don’t know if that’s the case in Portugal, but I do remember this project: FON. Of course that here in Portugal, the same (rather stupid) ISP imposed limitation that makes running FON nodes obsolete does the same thing for Schneier’s view on wireless connection’s security: ISPs here will charge you not only for the broadband of your connection, but also for the actual amount of traffic you’ve used. Add to this free (as in for everybody to use) wireless connection, and you’re in for some astronomical bills…

… changed, again! I found myself wondering through the templates page, and when I clicked in one of thumbnails, I found out, much to my amusement, that what actually shows up, is a preview of how the current blog will appear if the selected template is activated (remember that to see the templates page you need to be in the admin web page). I thought that was very cool, and decided to give it a try. And so I found my self trying and disposing of most of the templates shown. Eventually (after a looong picking process) I ended up with the current one (changed it’s header, of course!), and ended up changing the name of the blog too: all the previous names were somehow related to the templates; I wanted that to end. So I picked the name of the song that turned into being Tolkien’s world: Ainulindalë.

Guess that’s what happens when have a (way too much) wandering mind…