Wed, 28 Jun 2006
Weekend in Znojmo
Last weekend I was with Iva and my coworkers on a trip to Znojmo. It was a nice trip and I am sure Iva liked it. I took my bicycle with the child seat, and we went for a ride to Šobes.
Iva seems to like riding with me in the child seat - I think she has much better view from the bike than from the car seat. I bought the seat with reclining back, so that she can sleep in the seat if she wants to. However, with a helmet, sleeping even in this type of seat is not very comfortable.
BTW, I don't wear a helmet myself. Can the helmet really protect the (non mountain-bike) cyclist? I have found this helmet FAQ, and also the Wikipedia article on bicycle helmets is quite interesting.
2 replies for this story:
adelton wrote: Helmet
Well, I went over my front wheel (of a MTB) this Saturday, on a regular asphalt concrete road. Even if I did not get any impact to my head (that I would remember ;-) I am quite glad I wore my helmet. I wish I had some protection on my knees and shoulder as well. :-( ;-)
Yenya wrote: Minor injuries
This would probably belong to the "protecting from minor injuries" cases.
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Thu, 22 Jun 2006
Perl6 syntax
I have just came across the Perl6 Synopsis, so I wanted to see where the Perl development is heading to. I must say, I think moving to Perl6 would be a horrible task. I still did not read everything, but so far it seems some design decisions are a bit weird for me:
- Single dot (".") instead of an arrow ("->") as a dereference operator. While it is not bad per se (several languages like Ruby or C use it), I think the arrow is more readable (because it is wider, it provides better visual delimitation).
- Long dot (the "object\ .method()" construct). It is visually awful (as backslash is usually associated with string interpolation or escaping special characters). Whitespaces in Perl6 will be more involved as a part of syntax than in Perl5. I think the significant whitespace is a domain of Python, but now it is also in Perl6. I think introducing the long dot into the Perl6 syntax is probably connected with having to use dot as a dereference operator instead of an arrow.
- Mixed-case words (such as builtin type names, but I have seen this in other contexts in the Synopsis documents as well). IThinkThisIsAJavaWayOfDoingThings, WhichIsClearlyUnreadable. DefinitelyLessReadableThan underline_delimited_identifiers.
- Native versus object types (at least they have autoboxing). Having to distinguish between int and Int data types is not Do What I Mean. I think the main purpose of scripting languages is that the programmer does not need to think about (obvious) type conversions. Is it another try to sneak Java drawbacks^Wfeatures into Perl?
That said, there are definitely positive aspects of Perl6 as well - for example the ability to use any Unicode pair characters as comment or regex delimiters (for example the Japanese corner quotes in: "qr「match」"). But I think for me the above problems mean that I would have to stick with Perl5 as long as possible, or I would have to lear another language, which would have worse (or smaller) libraries than Perl has (Ruby), or which has even more annoying syntax (Python, the No-oneliners-please language).
1 replies for this story:
Milan Zamazal wrote:
I don't like Python (because of its ad hoc design), but its syntax is much better than Perl's one. When I tried to learn Perl I had to give up, partially because I had got lost in its syntax before I finished learning the language. This didn't happen to me with any of the ~20 other programming languages I've tried to learn so far. One may or may not like Python's syntax (I don't like it, it's about as stupid as in most other programming languages). But no-oneliners and strict indentation are no problem in any non-trivial programs, because you should write the code in a similar style anyway, in any programming language. The important thing is that Python programs are, unlike Perl programs, basically readable without much training. And that matters a lot. Reading your description of Perl6 syntax changes, I don't think you lose so much, it's simply still the worst syntax I've ever seen :-). BTW, I agree MixedCase identifiers are evil, but you can cope with them using the glasses-mode in Emacs if you'd like :-).
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Fri, 16 Jun 2006
AnimeNFO Radio
People at manga.cz chat have told me about AnimeNFO Radio - a Shoutcast-based streaming radio-like application. It has a web-based front-end, in which users can request songs to be played, rate the songs, etc.
It mostly works, but there is a serious drawback - when I start to listen, and request some tracks to be played, they get added to the end of the queue (which is usually between half an hour and hour long). So by the time "my" songs are on air, I usually have to leave for lunch or something. I think it would be better to have some local player, which would know what tracks I have and which ones I prefer, and it should then create a mix of the local tracks with some remote streamed songs, preferably those recommended by usesr with similar preferences as I have. It could even send back info about the tracks I listen, and update my profile on the server.
Ther playlist lacks few tracks which I like: they don't have Nadesico OST, and they don't have the OP from Scrapped Princess, for example. I have yet to figure out how to posts the requests to their forum. On the other hand, I have already heared few interesting songs I don't have.
1 replies for this story:
ales zelinka wrote: last.fm
kas:preferably those recommended by usesr with similar preferences as I have. It could even send back info about the tracks I listen, and update my profile on the server. you've just described how www.last.fm works. it can't mix local and streamed songs, you have to do it manualy ;) it is more like social network with radios and their musical collection is probably not big enough to let it play all day long, but it is worth a try.
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Tue, 13 Jun 2006
Cancel this account!
The dwmw2's story about his Vodafone account reminds me of the time when I have been trying to cancel the bank account at Česká spořitelna. Why does it have to be so hard to speak to a competent person in these big companies?
0 replies for this story:
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Mon, 05 Jun 2006
Usability tests
Apparently Novell did usability tests of their GNOME desktop (I think I have already read about it in the Linux Journal or somewhere). Today I have managed to browse their results: interesting work, I must say. However, there was one thing that surprised me, and I wondered whether the researchers did have any basic knowledge of how UNIX works at all:
In the "Set time and date"
test, the test subjects' task was to adjust the date and time on the local
system. One of the main problems was that they were confused when the
time setting application prompted for the root password - they incorrectly
supposed that they have to log out from the whole session and then login back
as a superuser. So far OK, I would say "fix the appearance of the
password dialog of pam_timestamp (or whatever the responsible party is)".
However, the researchers' recommendation was: "Fix time and date settings to not require root access". WTF? This can be easily translated to "Make users log in as root by default", which is a behaviour of The Other OS, Which Should Not Be Named Here, and the behaviour which is often refered to as one of the main problems in the security of that OS. Bleeeh.
7 replies for this story:
Abraxis wrote: New times in kernel
AFAIK there is new feature in kernel allowing processes to have completely independened times. It's designed for virtualization (Xen, UML) but I can imagine it can be also usefull for this.
Yenya wrote: virtual time
Yes, I know about virtual time patches. But even then, you need a superuser access inside your domain (XEN, UML). I think we should not suggest that users run their sessions as root, even though it would be inside the virtual domain.
Adelton wrote: No need to be root ...
You say that this was a desktop usability test. I can easily imagine the host being single-user-mostly, and then it makes sense for the user logged on the console to change the time settings instead of being forced to know the root password. I mean, the user (a mother, a wife, a granddad) knows the current time, wants to tell the correct time to the computer -- why should he need to know the root password?
Yenya wrote: Re: No need to be root ...
How the computer can know that it is single-user-mostly? It would make sense to create a "single-user-mostly" config (gdm autologin, etc.), and authenticate the time adjustment with pam_console in such situation. But I think setting the time _should_ remain root-only task.
Adelton wrote: Someone will tell it
Obviously someone has to tell the computer that actions like updating time should be allowed even by nonprivileged users. That someone has to be root.
Yenya wrote: Single-user system
Yes, but such a system is probably out of scope of the general GNOME usability tests, so "Fix time and date settings to not require root access" recommendation does not apply here.
Cordelia wrote: gndBaPFilxJN
Wow! Talk about a psoitng knocking my socks off!
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Fri, 02 Jun 2006
COSA
Some eight years ago, I wrote a driver for synchronous serial boards named COSA. COSA was an ISA-based board, so it is pretty obsolete these days. I occasionally fix the in-kernel driver, when somebody reports a bug (last fix was about half a year ago, IIRC). Today, an e-mail with the subject "COSA" arrived:
It was not a bug report, just some user of this driver sent me a mail, telling me that they are moving to a newer technology, and saying thanks for the driver, which worked for them for several years. The above photo (and two others) of their old Compaq Deskpro router with the COSA board (that green thing in the upper part) was attached. I was glad that my driver helped some people using flexible Linux-based routers instead of slow, expensive, and proprietary solutions (read: Cisco low-end routers). And of course, the driver helped the sales of COSA boards as well - I guess in the end, despite being originally designed for use with NetBSD, there might have been more Linux-based routers with COSA than NetBSD-based ones.
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The insurance you don't need
I have a friend who likes to have everything insured, just in case something happens. He has even been trying to persuade me to buy an insurance for something, and he was offering to share his rebate with me. At that point I thought that from a basic fact of "the insurance company needs to make a profit" it is clear that every insurance is in fact (on average) a loss for the insured person.
So I think the insurance is only worth it, when you are not expected to have money to cover the damage yourself (such as when you buy a new car, and do not have money to immediately buy another one, when the first one is totaled or stolen). But for things like damages in order of low tens of thousands CZK (cca 30 CZK = 1 Euro), the insurance is acutally a nonsense, because you can well cover the damage yourself, without routing the money through the insurance company.
Today I have found an interesting article on K5: it has a title Don't buy insurance you don't need!, and the author gives my above thougths a more clear wording, and mentions also another things like deductible money. You may also want to read the comments, especially this one, which mentions the role of a bonus for claim-free time.
2 replies for this story:
Milan Zamazal wrote:
"From a basic fact `the insurance company needs to make a profit' it is clear that every insurance is in fact (on average) a loss for the insured person." This statement is based on incomplete assumptions (thus its conclusion may be both true or untrue), as often happens in economy theories. In your thoughts, you must consider at least two additional facts: 1. The insurance probably has influence on behavior of people and thus the total damages. For instance, insurance companies are motivated to reduce the damages, so they can invest part of the money into various means to achieve that and that may reduce or increase your total spendings on damages + insurance. Or thanks to the insurance you may become less motivated to protect your posessions and thus the total spendings on damages + insurance increase. Frauds on both sides should be counted too. 2. By buying insurance, the usage value of your car may increase. For instance, you may be less afraid to travel when your car and household are insured. This way you spend your money not exactly just on covering damages, but on getting more from your car. Such money may be just another investment, not a loss. So I'd say the decision whether to insure something is much less trivial (in all directions) than you suggest.
Yenya wrote:
I think the two additional facts you mention, while being true, are apparently pretty marginal (especially the second one): I think it is far worse to handle (for example) the repairs of the car, or the task of buying another one, (which you have to do no matter if you have an insurance or not), than actually paying for the damage.