Robert Marcano's blog

History meme

robert — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:08:48 -0300

Everyone is doing this on Planet GNOME, so I wanted to see the results too:

$ history|awk '{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}'|sort -rn|head
150 cd
135 ll
105 hg
89 vi
39 less
39 find
37 sed
35 rm
35 tail
35 cat

ll = ls -al.

Why Smalltalk

robert — Wed, 02 May 2007 11:38:06 -0300

Reading the onsmalltalk.com, found the article named Why Smalltalk, and I share the feelings of the author, you must try Smalltalk to understand why we Smalltalkers think that way. I still dream with an opportunity to teach Smalltalk in an academic environment, because as the article says "Object oriented programming means something entirely different to a Smalltalker than to someone doing OO in another language"

Do anyone need a seasoned Smalltalker demonstration?... hahahaha

New life for HTML against Flash?

robert — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 16:30:14 -0300

According to Mykzilla, according to Bernzilla, according to SimpleBits, according to MTV Labs, mtv.com has switched back to an HTML-based site from the Flash-based site they implemented nine months ago. I am not a big fan of Flash based sites for a lot of reasons, I just only hope web designers take this as an example before choosing a flashy site against a productive site.

�Qu�???? �derechos de autor? �con que se come eso?

robert — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 09:45:30 -0300

Esto es lo que corre por mi mente que deben estar pensando algunos "profesionales" trabajando para el actual gobierno venezolano (o ser� desgobierno). �Por qu� lo digo? solo revisen la rese�a de mi amigo Igvir de como una foto de su autor�a es usada en una publicidad impresa sin su autorizaci�n, y mucho menos de la persona en la foto.

�Ser� posible ejercer alguna acci�n legal? donde los m�s seguro es que se gaste m�s dinero tratando de defender tus derechos que obteniendo resultados satisfactorios.

�Ser� que est�n escasos los cerebros que entiendan lo que es respetar los derechos de autor? o ser� que en Venezuela estamos tan acostumbrados a ver vendedores informales vendiendo cuanta copia ilegal posible, y ver hasta a la polic�a comprando, o escuchar a personas que todos los d�as dicen haber visto una pel�cula nueva porque se la bajaron de internet, que hasta algunos publicistas o dise�adores creen poder hacer lo mismo impunemente

Meme: �Que usas para trabajar?

robert — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 09:01:32 -0400

Aprendiendo de Igvir que es un Meme aqu� van los datos

IBM Thinkpad R50p, 1GB de RAM, disco de 60GB 7200 RPM. Fedora Core 6 x86, y no puedo vivir sin 1600x1200 de resoluci�n
y para las pruebas un Pentium 4, 1GB de RAM, disco de 80GB, con Fedora Core 6 x86_64, Red Hat Enterprise Linux x86_64, Windows XP x86
Monitor CRT de 17"
Un Sony Ericsson M600i para el correo m�vil

Lamentablemente no puedo tener este accesorio en la oficina todos los d�as como si se puede en Google

A ver Nelo.... cuidado con la pelota que te lanzo ahora

on YouTube

robert — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 14:27:13 -0400

Anyone can publish a photo or video, even without permission from the photographer or the people involved .

Everyone against Red Hat

robert — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 22:33:20 -0400

The later announcement of the Novell/Microsoft partnership is another example of the attacks that Red Hat is facing, the previous one was from Oracle.

Red Hat is the current leader in the commercial Linux server market, and Novell is a very distant second. This is just Novell trying to join forces to attack a common enemy. I never trusted them as a real Open Source business, they only bought Suse because their proprietary OS was dying, in order to be able to continue selling their other proprietary offerings. In contrast Red Hat buys closed source applications and make all the changes needed to open source them, for example Fedora/Red Hat Directory Server based on its powerful predecessor, Netscape Directory Server; meanwhile Novell do not open source their core business. Novell buys Ximian for their .Net clone Mono, a dangerous proposition because MS will always be there as the only director of .Net future; Red Hat instead invest in a free Java implementation (GCJ/GNU Classpath). I hadn't bought any Linux product from Novell, and now it seems more improbable.

Finally I don't want to forget to talk about the crazy Oracle idea, do they really think that I will pay for support for a Red Hat Enterprise Linux clone to someone that has no expertize on OS development, that will give me security updates after Red Hat has done the job (with a delay), and that is not able to implement a decent JEE application server and that their support service recommends temporal hacks and do not solve the real issues on the application server... Yes Suuuuuure.

Update: Red Hat responds

Openly defined standards create interoperability everyone can implement. That's the real solution. It doesn't require a deal between two companies.

Linux based PS3

robert — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 09:41:59 -0300

I have no doubt now that the PlayStation 3 is entirely Linux based, and not will be an optional feature only like with the PS2, just read the Crytek job offer.

Gdb debugging knowledge
Linux toolchain experience

those two requirements are the key.

A friend's paper and LaTeX

robert — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 22:26:54 -0300

I have been helping a friend that need to write a paper with complex mathematical equations, so I am remembering a lot of what I learned of LaTeX. I did not needed to convince him to dump traditional word processors because he was experiencing a lot of crashes and performance problems with MS Word. To recommend him to use OpenOffice is not the solution either because, like MS Word, it is not designed for this kind of job. I only needed to show him a few samples made with LaTeX: Physics and Mathematics Formularies.

Those formularies make me remember that I learned a lot of that stuff; I specially breathed the Electricity & Magnetism chapter, but my fixation on computer sciences forced me to store all that important knowledge deep in my brain, not forgotten, just stored on very slow RAM. I am beginning to think that I must pursue a degree in physics, that was always what I wanted to study, but one day a honest and short conversation with my physics teacher on high school convinced me to take other option. Things in the office are begining to slow down, not because there is less work, but because I needed to do something not easy for me, manage the bigger picture and let the details to others, so I hope to be in the situation where I can really dedicate time to the physics degree, well a few years ago I never thought to be able to have time to study the Japanese language, but now I am studying it, so time will tell.

Elephants Dream released to the public

robert — Fri, 19 May 2006 11:51:58 -0300

Elephants Dream is a 3D movie made with Open Source software, even the movie is open content so you can download the rendered video and also the production files splitted across two DVDs. I ocassionaly do small things on Blender as a hobby, but I am downloading these movie source files in order to know how the professionals do their work

To follow the development of this movie was very entertaining, because it was a good stress test for Blender; many optimizations to the software where made in the process, for example when they were having memory related problems on Mac OS X that were more noticeable than when they were using Blender on Linux. WARNING: you will need a good computer if you want to render the video yourself, a lot of memory and patience is needed, unless you have a 64bits Linux render farm .