Marcelo Toledo

Steve Yegge posted yesterday a book in his blog, XEmacs is Dead. Long Live XEmacs! Ok, it’s not a book - but looks like -, it’s a very interesting article and we share many ideas.

I don’t know how to define it right now, but long time ago, Emacs was my favorite software, I used it for almost everything besides editing files, mail, news, shell, scripting, web browser, irc, calendar, contacts, etc. I even started writing a book about it five years ago, I wanted to finish it a while back, but I got an access denied from my editor, of course.

It doesn’t interests people anymore, Emacs has unbelievable potential, we’re late, very late, but nothing blocks us from getting back in shape, a lot of work has to be done, barriers to be broken, but people need to be creative and reinvent it.

I use it everyday of my life, it’s my favorite editor and I really hope someone do something, but honestly, Emacs is getting old, lazy and fat.

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Most of my friends already know that I lost my iPhone, I got out of my car, it felt and I only noticed few minutes later when I was already far away. I tried to call from my other phone dozen times, someone took it, I tried to negotiate, but it was clearly a robber, he wanted $2K for it, I don’t need to tell you where I told him to stick the phone, right?

One feature I missed that day was a security trigger, where remotely I could erase it completely. Imagine that my entire life was there, photos, contacts, schedule, etc. I could simply send an sms with a password and it could auto magically erase everything and block the phone. Or I could call my operator and tell them my phone was robbed. To be honest, I think this should be a standard security protocol, all phones should support.

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Andrew Binstock and Donald Knuth converse on the success of open source, the problem with multicore architecture, the disappointing lack of interest in literate programming, the menace of reusable code, and that urban legend about winning a programming contest with a single compilation.

Andrew Binstock: You are one of the fathers of the open-source revolution, even if you aren’t widely heralded as such. You previously have stated that you released TeX as open source because of the problem of proprietary implementations at the time, and to invite corrections to the code—both of which are key drivers for open-source projects today. Have you been surprised by the success of open source since that time?

Donald Knuth: The success of open source code is perhaps the only thing in the computer field that hasn’t surprised me during the past several decades. But it still hasn’t reached its full potential; I believe that open-source programs will begin to be completely dominant as the economy moves more and more from products towards services, and as more and more volunteers arise to improve the code.

For example, open-source code can produce thousands of binaries, tuned perfectly to the configurations of individual users, whereas commercial software usually will exist in only a few versions. A generic binary executable file must include things like inefficient “sync” instructions that are totally inappropriate for many installations; such wastage goes away when the source code is highly configurable. This should be a huge win for open source.

Yet I think that a few programs, such as Adobe Photoshop, will always be superior to competitors like the Gimp—for some reason, I really don’t know why! I’m quite willing to pay good money for really good software, if I believe that it has been produced by the best programmers.

Remember, though, that my opinion on economic questions is highly suspect, since I’m just an educator and scientist. I understand almost nothing about the marketplace.

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The pictures you see were taken in Google Zurich, the employees have full access to all places with no exceptions:

Reception of Google Zurich.

A slider connects two zones, second floor is a cafeteria and first a gymnasium. Why wait the elevator?

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From the LKML:

* Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> wrote:
 
> On Mon, 21 Apr 2008, Jesse Barnes wrote:
>
> And now I get to figure out just how much trouble I've gotten myself into...
 
Mwhahahaaa! Sucker. You'll find out.

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Our new baby is about to born, look how beautiful:

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I was looking for something related to the linux kernel, went to fall in ibm website displaying these two documents, written almost three years ago, introducing some very basic idea of the linux 2.6 kernel, two sets of around 20 pages each, interesting introductory material:

Hacking the Linux 2.6 kernel, Part 1: Getting ready

Hacking the Linux 2.6 kernel, Part 2: Making your first hack

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Web 2.0 is special. And so are the places that make it happen.
Here’s how the offices of web 2.0 companies look like. I’ve also added descriptions to each site in case you’ve been living in a bubble and don’t know what they do.

Loved and hated by many and founded in march of 2006, Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging site that allows users to post their latest updates. An update is limited by 140 characters and can be posted through three methods: web form, text message, or instant message.

The Twitter door.

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I wake up in a beautiful Saturday morning, start reading my feeds and I face this post in Fon blog:

“Great news! We’ve raised another $9.5 million to grow the movement! We’ve got lots of great plans for the money. We’re going to Launch FON in Russia, launch the Fonera 2.0 (the fonera that uploads and downloads stuff to and from the internet while you are doing something else with your laptop) and develop the fonera 802.11n for an end of the year launch!”

Stop the world! I want to get off! Let’s go back a while and remember what hapenned on Sunday, February 5, 2006, 2 years ago:

“… FON can now count Google , Skype, Sequoia Capital, and Index Ventures as investors and backers. They’ve joined us to help advance the FON movement, leading a group that has put 18 million Euros into FON…”

That was fast, 18 million Euros is gone in around 24 months, I really though it was going to last more, only solution, more investment, this time 1/3 of the initial investment, 9.5 milion dollars, why it’s announced in dollars and not Euros like the last time? Fool me! It is 6 million Euros, around 8 months of happiness.

“I’m really exited we were able to raise so much money, and not just because I’m expecting a gigantic raise ;)! It’s a challenging economic climate and an investment this large shows support for our business model. The leading investor in the round was the US Venture Capital arm of Sistema, Russia´s leading telco. Other investors in this C round include Google, British Telecom, Digital Garage and our founder and CEO Martin Varsavsky.”

They say they will make money selling a network they don’t own or have any control over it. In the beginning the idea was interesting, but you need to reinvent yourself all the time, it has serious problems. If you own the hotspot, you need to make money with it or it must come with more value to be interesting, none happens with FON, no one makes money and thats why people lose interest very fast, the hotspot is already unstable because people don’t care about having it up all the time, it’s just a matter of time when it will be down forever.

This reflects a network you can’t trust, will you pay for your neighbor network when you know it will suddenly go down? Will you knock the door and say, “I need to send important emails, can you please turn it on? I paid for it!”. And even worse, what kind of place they have networks? I want to be in a Cafe, Airport, Restaurant, Mall, not home.

Be creative FON, this model is not sustainable, no one can live with investments forever.

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