Everyday I use to read the news at DW, which is a resource of news provided by the known german channel 'Deustche Welle'. I'm happy to see a new that says something that a lot of people already knew, but others didn't: Linux is being used more and more, and is used in important cities like Paris and Munich.
The new -in spanish- here.
martes, octubre 26, 2004
lunes, octubre 25, 2004
We are Hackers!!!
Today in the afternoon I had chance to go to computer event, where the most interesting conference was given by a man working at a enterprise dedicated to the design of websites. They pointed out lot of very interesting facts, and also gave me the opportunity to figure out others.
The man I'm talking about talked about how important the design of a website was. One of the most important things is how easy for an user results. Imagine a site that has a lot of information, and that that site has also a bad organization. Even having a huge amount of information, it's sure the site won't success, because for the user it can represent a bad experience.
He talked they analyse the site they are going to work on, and check for a lot of variables, such: information arrangement, design, they way the page behaves when a resize is done, etc.
Other interesting thing he pointed out was that it's possible to invest a lot of money in your site, but if for example, you don't let the user know the current url, you are wasting that money. Finally, that the marketing was a big aspect to be take care of, just as defining waht you want to do with your site.
We are just simple workers
Maybe the most important thing he mentioned -that is not part of the design of a site-, is that they only design the site, and then they hire somebody to do the work -this is, the coding-. However, he mentioned this in a way in which I could feel he talked about the coders/hackers as simple workers, who don't need to be well paid. What???????
But it is natural, because in Mexico there's no big advance in the computer area. I mean, we don't have big corporations yet, which helps the money-people to think we don't are that qualified people. Add the fact that lot of coders and hackers sell their work so cheap, because of the mexican economical status, and we have a really bad situation. The way in which the man talked about the hackers -almost as people who do bad design- helped me to understand it. Let's face it: the good hackers trend to be bad designers. But maybe that needs to change.
The importance of the design
The first important conclusion is that the design must be planned. Define your target, define who will use your software. Think about its needs. Thinks about the simpleness. Thinks about the colors. Think in everything you can. This will definitely help your product to achieve a bigger step in quality.
I just can about it following the Gnome project ideas: be as possible as you can, but not _that_ simple. You must have a usability guide, you must have in mind what your customers want.
Paste the money and the science
At least something in Mexico happens is that there is a big problem in the way the money is paid. It looks that the current politics of our president -Vicente Fox, who is part of the PAN political group, an extrem conservativ one- are the same we have had for lot of time: the richs get the more, and the poors the less. That's it all resume din that phrase.
The difference could be done by the people hiring and having corporations -even small ones-, who could give their workers a better salary. Guess what? almost NOBODY does it. Isn't it really bad?
I really think a good thing could be having a corporation -a computers related one- where you are also a coder/hacker and _know_ that your workers worth. You don't explode them, you get the money -the money you really need, not more, not less- and stop thinking that the informatic people must not be well paided.
For example, for the example of the corporation dedicated to the design of the sites, you could have in your same corp both the areas dedicated to design and dedicated to the coding. I'm pretty sure you will have a better way to optimize your designs with your coding areas. Isn't that a good idea?
Economical status?
I think that one of the results of our current economical system is this: everyone out there is thinking in how to gain more and more money. In a world where everything is money, you can't escape this trend. I whish that other economical system were possible -and not just a dream-. Maybe, and just maybe we could spend more time in other aspects of our live: social, human, arts.
But we are not, and the best we can do is compete.
Conclusion
Ok, maybe nothing that productive can be gotten from this -it takes so much time and studies-, but somebody could right now begin a corporation that designs precious sites and also codes them. You will have opportunities to give a better way of live to your workers -not just, maybe, the people who graduates from a private university-. As least in Mexico, that's the way the things work.
The man I'm talking about talked about how important the design of a website was. One of the most important things is how easy for an user results. Imagine a site that has a lot of information, and that that site has also a bad organization. Even having a huge amount of information, it's sure the site won't success, because for the user it can represent a bad experience.
He talked they analyse the site they are going to work on, and check for a lot of variables, such: information arrangement, design, they way the page behaves when a resize is done, etc.
Other interesting thing he pointed out was that it's possible to invest a lot of money in your site, but if for example, you don't let the user know the current url, you are wasting that money. Finally, that the marketing was a big aspect to be take care of, just as defining waht you want to do with your site.
We are just simple workers
Maybe the most important thing he mentioned -that is not part of the design of a site-, is that they only design the site, and then they hire somebody to do the work -this is, the coding-. However, he mentioned this in a way in which I could feel he talked about the coders/hackers as simple workers, who don't need to be well paid. What???????
But it is natural, because in Mexico there's no big advance in the computer area. I mean, we don't have big corporations yet, which helps the money-people to think we don't are that qualified people. Add the fact that lot of coders and hackers sell their work so cheap, because of the mexican economical status, and we have a really bad situation. The way in which the man talked about the hackers -almost as people who do bad design- helped me to understand it. Let's face it: the good hackers trend to be bad designers. But maybe that needs to change.
The importance of the design
The first important conclusion is that the design must be planned. Define your target, define who will use your software. Think about its needs. Thinks about the simpleness. Thinks about the colors. Think in everything you can. This will definitely help your product to achieve a bigger step in quality.
I just can about it following the Gnome project ideas: be as possible as you can, but not _that_ simple. You must have a usability guide, you must have in mind what your customers want.
Paste the money and the science
At least something in Mexico happens is that there is a big problem in the way the money is paid. It looks that the current politics of our president -Vicente Fox, who is part of the PAN political group, an extrem conservativ one- are the same we have had for lot of time: the richs get the more, and the poors the less. That's it all resume din that phrase.
The difference could be done by the people hiring and having corporations -even small ones-, who could give their workers a better salary. Guess what? almost NOBODY does it. Isn't it really bad?
I really think a good thing could be having a corporation -a computers related one- where you are also a coder/hacker and _know_ that your workers worth. You don't explode them, you get the money -the money you really need, not more, not less- and stop thinking that the informatic people must not be well paided.
For example, for the example of the corporation dedicated to the design of the sites, you could have in your same corp both the areas dedicated to design and dedicated to the coding. I'm pretty sure you will have a better way to optimize your designs with your coding areas. Isn't that a good idea?
Economical status?
I think that one of the results of our current economical system is this: everyone out there is thinking in how to gain more and more money. In a world where everything is money, you can't escape this trend. I whish that other economical system were possible -and not just a dream-. Maybe, and just maybe we could spend more time in other aspects of our live: social, human, arts.
But we are not, and the best we can do is compete.
Conclusion
Ok, maybe nothing that productive can be gotten from this -it takes so much time and studies-, but somebody could right now begin a corporation that designs precious sites and also codes them. You will have opportunities to give a better way of live to your workers -not just, maybe, the people who graduates from a private university-. As least in Mexico, that's the way the things work.
viernes, octubre 08, 2004
Patents ...
I'm very sick about the current patents system. The most known problem with the patents began, I think, with SCO reclaming intelectual properties over Linux kernel, or at least it marked the beginning of the moment we are living currently: the era where you suit the man selling magazines in the street, cause you have the patent number 999999999-565656 that reclaimg the right to sell magazines in the streets.
Probably I should patent the process by which human reproduce themselves - I call call it 'sex'.
The last stupid new I heard of, was a
suit by which Kodak is reclaiming 'a method by which a program can ask for help from another program', which is totally stupid.
Is this the era where everyone suits everyones, as I just states before? It looks like a bad business practice, more than a good one.
Probably I should patent the process by which human reproduce themselves - I call call it 'sex'.
The last stupid new I heard of, was a
suit by which Kodak is reclaiming 'a method by which a program can ask for help from another program', which is totally stupid.
Is this the era where everyone suits everyones, as I just states before? It looks like a bad business practice, more than a good one.
domingo, septiembre 26, 2004
Mono Days
Last thursday I met Miguel de Icaza at Mexico city, where he gave a conference about the advantges of the use of Linux (and particularly the Novell version) over the use of other OS.
His conference was part of a small Novell and Hp event surrounding Linux, and the mentioned event took place at a luxurious hotel where a lot of people had chance to talk to Miguel not only about computers, but abou politics and economics.
After the event we had lunch and I could met also Mancha, Cesar Octavio López Nataren ( the Mono JScript guy) and other Miguel's friends.
Just as always, I must say that I admire Miguel a lot and I'm happy to being working in the same project with him.
Properties Access Modifiers
Currently I'm implementing a new feature that is part of the C# 2.0 specs is the posibility to have your properties accessors with different access scopes. Today, a property is declared as follows:
This generates two methods, set_Property and also get_Property, that work very smoothly. It is important to note that both methods will inherit all the acess modifiers indicated in th Property declaration, so in the previous example the methods would be described as:
However, sometimes it would be great if the methods need to have different acess modifiers each one. For example, when you have an abstract class that exposes both get and set accessors, but want to declare the get as public, and the set as protected (thus reserved to the subclasses), wou will have to avoid declaring the set accessor and expose it in another way.
With this new feature found int C# 2.0, no more problems of this kind. Now is possible to declared one of the two accessors with different access modifier than the Property itself:
Finally, the accessors methods would be described then as:
Which will be clearer and prettier than before.
His conference was part of a small Novell and Hp event surrounding Linux, and the mentioned event took place at a luxurious hotel where a lot of people had chance to talk to Miguel not only about computers, but abou politics and economics.
After the event we had lunch and I could met also Mancha, Cesar Octavio López Nataren ( the Mono JScript guy) and other Miguel's friends.
Just as always, I must say that I admire Miguel a lot and I'm happy to being working in the same project with him.
Properties Access Modifiers
Currently I'm implementing a new feature that is part of the C# 2.0 specs is the posibility to have your properties accessors with different access scopes. Today, a property is declared as follows:
public int Property {
get {
return val;
}
set {
val = value;
}
}
This generates two methods, set_Property and also get_Property, that work very smoothly. It is important to note that both methods will inherit all the acess modifiers indicated in th Property declaration, so in the previous example the methods would be described as:
public int get_Property ( );
public void set_Property (int value);
However, sometimes it would be great if the methods need to have different acess modifiers each one. For example, when you have an abstract class that exposes both get and set accessors, but want to declare the get as public, and the set as protected (thus reserved to the subclasses), wou will have to avoid declaring the set accessor and expose it in another way.
With this new feature found int C# 2.0, no more problems of this kind. Now is possible to declared one of the two accessors with different access modifier than the Property itself:
public int Property {
get {
return val;
}
protected set {
val = value;
}
}
Finally, the accessors methods would be described then as:
public int get_Property ( );
protected void set_Property (int value);
Which will be clearer and prettier than before.
lunes, septiembre 06, 2004
The Geek cliché
I was reading a blog from a guy who is a geek (almost everybody blogging can be considered a geek), and then found little details that have helped to build the geek cliché, this is, all the things that all the people think a geek does. So I here enumerate them:
* Fortunately I hadn't to see him in person, when he missed a Linux event in which I was.
Of course these are only the *features* a geek has while he's online. Is that a lie or not?
- Read a lot of trash in the web
- A huge huge huge huge ego
- Dislike about the stupid society
- Have an open source hero ...
- ... talk tooooooo much about that hero
- Talk about the online communities they are in
- Hatting trolls but they themselves are trolls
- Doing nothing for the community
* Fortunately I hadn't to see him in person, when he missed a Linux event in which I was.
Of course these are only the *features* a geek has while he's online. Is that a lie or not?
sábado, septiembre 04, 2004
System Tune
Hell! I was preparing me to go to Xalapa today but ... yes, I forgot I had no money, and also that I'm in conflicts with my parents, so go figure out. Shit.
And trying to improve the performance on my almos dead pc (Celereon 500, 256 ram, 40 gb hd), I has to compile-the-linux-kernel, which took me almost 3 hours. And the system is just as slow as before. After checking the system performance, I saw that xmms was using almost 10% of the cpu! And that's just the mp3 player, that is a small application. Now think in Evolution, in Epiphany (because God, I don't use Mozilla), in all the open Terminals, in Gaim, in Xchat ...
The worst is that I could see that alsa is not as slow as before (when it was not included in the linux kernel officially), but it still is toooooo slow. Check the part of the report:
My God, I need a new pc.
Excuses for Federico
I know this is the second time I'm not able to go to Xalapa, and I must confess to be embarrased. I promise to send you the C# book with Mauricio (I know I will see you at irc, but just wanted to make clear that I'm very sorry about this situation).
And trying to improve the performance on my almos dead pc (Celereon 500, 256 ram, 40 gb hd), I has to compile-the-linux-kernel, which took me almost 3 hours. And the system is just as slow as before. After checking the system performance, I saw that xmms was using almost 10% of the cpu! And that's just the mp3 player, that is a small application. Now think in Evolution, in Epiphany (because God, I don't use Mozilla), in all the open Terminals, in Gaim, in Xchat ...
The worst is that I could see that alsa is not as slow as before (when it was not included in the linux kernel officially), but it still is toooooo slow. Check the part of the report:
NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
0 63316 7500 11m S 10.3 3.3 3:15.13 xmms
0 1820 816 1620 R 8.6 0.4 0:00.11 top
0 96076 27m 72m R 6.9 12.3 5:09.98 X
My God, I need a new pc.
Excuses for Federico
I know this is the second time I'm not able to go to Xalapa, and I must confess to be embarrased. I promise to send you the C# book with Mauricio (I know I will see you at irc, but just wanted to make clear that I'm very sorry about this situation).
miércoles, septiembre 01, 2004
Officially a Hacker
Today I commited System.Collections.Generic.Collection class, which is part of the generics support for Parametric Polymorphism in Mono. So, I can say that after sending some small patches, and now this class, I'm a Mono hacker. Now, it's time to go beyond and work on the left classes and then work at the Generational garbage collection support.
Little sample:
Compile with gmcs. Enjoy.
Little sample:
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
public class Test {
public static void Main ()
{
Collection <int> c = new Collection <int> ();
c.Add (3);
c.Add (5);
c.Add (11);
// Note that unboxing is not neccessary
int sum = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < c.Count; i++)
sum += c [i];
Console.WriteLine (sum);
}
}
Compile with gmcs. Enjoy.
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