7 I've updated the license of PikiPlus to GPLv3 and I invite
8 you to do the same with your programs and with any programs
9 distributed under the GPLv2 with the "or later version" clause.
13 ==== Italian profanity ====
15 I just found out that "A Cappella" is how Italians say "in the style of the church".
16 It's used for music played by human voice instead of instruments. Yes, indeed.
17 Nobody could understand why I was grinning :-)
21 ==== Random Birthday Paradox ====
23 I'm writing you this from ChrisBalls's house. cjb for IRC friends.
24 Yesterday was his wife's birthday. And also the birthday of somebody
25 else too. That's where the title came from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_paradox .
27 We're having a lot of fun and getting drunk very quickly. Someone
28 came with a box of Avocados with a picture of Avogardo saying:
29 "let's Party. arriba." It's the things like these that will make it
30 very sad for me to leave this nation.
32 Food is vegan, and incredibly tasty if you ask me. There are people
33 from the office as well as other nerds from other places. One guy
34 showed up with a tee saying: "shut the fuck up and write some
35 code!". We're listening to TheSoundOfSilence from Xyzzy's (*) mp3 player.
36 That's one of my favourite songs, but I thought it was from the Beatles :-)
38 (*) We'll call her Xyzzy 'cause she doesn't want her name to end up on
42 Xyzzy: remember...all is not as it appears to be and the best place to hide something is in plain sight
44 Bernie: hmmm... then I guess I'll hide at OLPC and the USCIS won't find me :-)
46 RandomBirthdayParty.jpg
47 RandomBirthdayPartyHouse.jpg
48 RandomBirthdayPartyTv.jpg
49 RandomBirthdayPartyHall.jpg
54 ==== Long time, no C++ ====
56 The title was inteded to be a joke on "long time, no see", because I've
57 not been updating the blog for some time.
59 But this reminds me that, yes, indeed I've not been doing any C++ for a few
60 months now. That's probably irrelevant to most of you... but this is my blog
61 and I get to decide what goes in. Except when *you* edit it. Damn WikiWikiWeb!
63 The reason we don't have any C++ in the OLPC is that, in the Linux world,
64 C++ never flied that much. The kernel hackers say it's not well suited
65 for kernel programming, and I partially agree. Of course, C++ can't be
66 used for glibc and POSIX system libraries. Even MicrosoftCompany uses C
69 This leaves us with three more layers to exclude: windowing server,
70 desktop and applications.
72 X11 is written in C for historical reasons. Since its internals mostly
73 deal with interfaces and specialization of interfaces, C++ would have
76 Gnome also uses C, for no good reason. KDE is older than Gnome and
77 was entirely written in C++, although I clearly remember g++ 2.7.2 being
78 quite a painful experience. The GObject crap in glib and GTK is expecially
79 ugly, hard to use and error prone due to lack of good OOP support in the
82 And applications? Well, applications in the OLPC are written in Python
83 anyway, like many higher level applications in regular Linux distros.
85 There's a few exceptions: Mozilla is written in C++ and eToys is written
86 in SmallTalk. I don't know about TamTam.
88 '''rasky:''' in fact, with the raise of scripting languages and fully-featured
89 platforms (like Java's), using C++ for doing almost *anything* is the wrong
90 choice. As you said, system programming wants C for several good reasons, and
91 almost anything else can be done in scripting language. I think one last thing
92 that C++ is still good today at is high-performance libraries (eg: math
93 libraries), where you don't want to use C and you need a lot of performance.
94 But C++ is feeling more and more like a dead horse...
96 '''marco:''' About writing kernels in C++:
97 http://okmij.org/ftp/cpp-digest/toy_OS.txt
101 ==== Under pressure ====
103 Miletstone B4 was expected to ship today. I don't care because my work
104 is for due for Trial2. But many of my colleagues were extremely
107 There is one last bug with some laptops not coming out of resume.
108 And it's still not fixed at 21:00. Kernel hackers are scraping
111 We had pizza together and, seeing so many tired faces, I casually asked:
112 "when do we close for summer?".
114 People look at me puzzled: "What do you mean exactly by ''close''?".
116 "Err... companies don't close for summer here in the States?".
118 They look at each other, trying to guess if it's some kind
119 of joke: "Why would companies ever ''close''? They're not schools."
121 I quickly added: "Oh, I'm asking because, you know, most
122 companies in Italy do close a few weeks for summer".
124 At this point everybody laughed like if companies closing
125 was an extremely funny idea.
127 This is one reason why we have a strong economy here: people
128 are extremely committed at work. Will I ever catch up? Hope so.
133 ==== Eutelia Voip ====
135 I have a new public phone number: {{055-3984187}}.
137 It's Eutelia's VOIP service, formerly Skypho. People told me
138 that the quality is good. All the previous phone numbers remain
141 I've also switched from Ekiga to a SIP client that doesn't
144 http://www.twinklephone.com/
146 Actually, the user interface is horrible. But if you close
147 your eyes, it works beautifully.
152 ==== Sleeping At The Office ====
154 We have a futon here. And it's quite comfortable. Sleeping
155 at the office has its pros and cons, hereby listed by Dillinger:
160 ==== Bender Down ====
162 There has been a longstanding outage of our wiki server since yesterday.
163 Today, my sister finally fixed the problem by rebooting both the modem
166 http://bender.codewiz.org/bender.jpg
168 I'm planning to move bender here one day, so I can properly maintain
169 it, but first I need to consolidate my visa position.
174 ==== More laptop news ====
176 Available here: http://wiki.laptop.org/index.php?title=News
178 Some links to videos in the end. There's not much about me, mostly because I've not done
179 much this week besides chasing bugs.
182 ==== Father and son private business ====
184 E' una settimana che non scrivi. Dove sei sparito? -- '''Babbo'''
186 Avevo problemi di ADSL piuttosto gravi su questo server... ora e' a posto, ma oggi ho da finire delle cose urgenti. Vedo di scrivere due righe nel w/e, scusate tanto -- '''bernie'''
192 Two days ago I went to the local pub for the HappyHour... the HungryHour actually.
193 And I ordered this tasty dish of Cheese Bacon Fries! Yummy yum!
195 http://gastrologica.com/cheesefries.jpg
197 Ok, it's a disgusting blob of pure fat. And the infamous Cheddar
198 cheese, also known as "solid cholesterol":
200 http://www.dann-online.com/HappyHour/lrg93.jpg
203 If you're looking for something healthy, you can always try a
204 salad. Just make sure you don't get a Caesar salad with its
205 ultra-fat dressing sauce:
207 http://www.kosherblog.net/media/caesar.jpg
209 You may also want to avoid hot dogs drowned in chili sauce:
211 http://onokinegrindz.typepad.com/ono_kine_grindz/images/WaffleDogwithChili-thumb.jpg
213 American pizza is edible and even good... But I recently discovered that
214 Pepperoni aren't vegetables, but a kind of hot salami:
216 http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/PTGPOD/409409~Close-up-of-Pepperoni-Pizza-Posters.jpg
219 And, finally, beware of food franchises pretending to be Italian.
222 http://www.emich.edu/dining/images/sbarro/sbarro.jpg
227 ==== Bernie is going to write something here soon ====