Shlomi Fish's Journal

Predicting Three Comebacks

2008-07-07T09:10:38Z

Well, it's a common belief that comebacks in technology don't happen often, but this time I predict three comebacks. I cannot recommend that you base your decisions (much less investment plans) based on it, but here they are.

Comeback #1: Non-x86 Machines

Once upon a time, companies spent a fortune on costy UNIX servers or even IBM mainframes, just to be able to run their operation. Since then, x86-based computers have become faster and more capable, enough to make people be able to run Microsoft Windows NT or Unix-based Operating systems on them. This is now the most popular setup on the Internet for servers (much less clients and workstations).

However, these x86 machines are not as integrated as their non-x86 equivalents (UltraSPARC, PowerPC, etc.), are still much slower (due to the limitations of the x86 architecture vs. the superior RISC family of architectures). This costs in a lot of time of maintenance, many hardware failures, and sub-optimal lifetime. It is well-known that there are some PC XT machines which are still running. However, finding a low-end desktop Pentium I machine that's still OK is an exercise in futility. And even the high-end x86 servers suffer from many problems.

Human time is much more costy than shelling some money for getting a good RISC machine. And with the portability and stability of the GNU system, and portable and free operating systems such as Linux, or the BSDs, you can easily run a server there at ease.

So what can Sun and IBM (and friends) do about it?. They should phase out their own OSes in favour of Linux, as people have grown to dislike Solaris (to say nothing of AIX, HP-UX, or greater brain-damages). Don't get me wrong - Solaris has its place and I'm sure is a fine piece of engineering. But GNU/Linux is better for trying to promote the hardware.

Sun should also make the OpenSolaris licence GPLv2 and GPLv3 compatible, to allow it to borrow code from Linux and other GPLed-products (and vice versa). And they should also start supporting Perl, PHP, CPython, CRuby, Mono etc. etc. instead of just Java or whatever has been hyped. (Similar to what Microsoft have been doing recently for its MS-Windows OSes).

All of this will allow selling more hardware, getting more support and ergo - more profits. I think the transition to non-x86 machines will happen anyhow, but that will make it faster, and much more profitable for them.

Note that it is not the end of either Intel or much less the end of Microsoft. I still see workstations dominated by x86 in the near future, and both MS and Intel are insanely profitable and have enough time to re-invent themselves. But I think (and hope) we'll be seeing more and more non-x86 servers and to a lesser extent workstations.

Comeback #2 : Mandriva

Once upon a time, the Mandriva Linux distribution (formerly Mandrake) was the de-facto standard for home Linux desktops. Then vocal Debian people started spreading a lot of pro-Debian and anti-everything-else FUD, and Ubuntu also became the over-hyped distribution-of-the-moment. Meanwhile, naturally, Mandriva suffered from lack of popularity and negative FUD, but also still continued to improve.

Right now, as Ubuntu Hardy (which I nicknamed "Hardly") tends to hang up or worse so often, and Ubuntu as a general rule seems to be infested with red-tape, it seems that there's an opening for Mandriva and distributions that are very good, but were not as hyped as Ubuntu.

Here are some Israelis who converted away from Ubuntu lately:

These are all Linux experts and FOSS contributors. It's harder to tell what the common joe who wants to install Linux at home will choose. But I think that they will tend to hear a recommendation from the experts, too.

Will Mandriva become the hottest distribution? Maybe not. But it doesn't matter - Mandriva was never about hype. Naturally, Mandriva has had and still have its share of bugs and problems (mostly non-critical). But so do most other distributions, including such whose users were spreading anti-hype against it.

Writing this from a Cooker (which is the Mandriva equivalent of something like Debian Testing or Unstable) system.

Comeback #3: Perl

And now we come to the third and final comeback - Perl. You can often here that "Perl is dead", or that "Perl is dying", etc. It's a matter of image, more than technology or mindshare. Many people would blame it on the anti-Perl FUD we can hear from various sources. But I believe the problem has lied in the Perl world itself. To quote an email I sent:

The Perl technology is in an excellent shape. It's fast, feature-rich, powerful, easy to use and learn, under active development, relatively bug-free, with many automated tests, and with many 1st party, 2nd party and 3rd party enhancements (re CPAN).

However, the Perl community is sick. Not dying - but sick.

This sickness was not caused by external attacks. Instead it was created from within the Perl community. By a leadership/intelligencia who were more keen on writing and selling closed books (see my essay about it) than on promoting the core Perl technology, documentation and community. It was caused by an "official" IRC network (which is still the first hit on a Google search for "irc perl") which is full of ego, abuse and hostility - where kicking, bannings (and seemingly K-lines) are not only common, but tolerated and seem desirable. It was caused by administrators and leaders who became too "busy" (and as a result heavily unproductive) to have time for Perl, which is what have been placing food on their table. It was caused by central sites whose source code and data were hidden from the public due to a lot of unknown bad reasons, and for absolutely no good ones. (We advocate openness after all).

But most of all it was caused by the many competent and active Perl contributors who did not take the initiative to replace the existing and sick infrastructure by a more independent and decentralised effort.

(I had written something relatively similar in the pre-Web-2.0 era as part of my "Usability of the Perl World for Newcomers Essay". Nevertheless perlbuzz.com deserves credit for presenting it better, making it public knowledge, and making it more obvious.)

But the situation is now getting better. There are more independent developers who have started to set up sites and help resources of their own. More people blog about their Perl experiences. I'm also going to continue giving my share of the contribution by setting up Perl-Speak (Please don't register yet - the E-mail does not work yet due to problems with my hosting), by contributing to the FAQs, documentation and wikis, and by helping with coding. People like me would also like to complement the inadequate, "official", and completely non-open *.perl.org infrastructure, which has been suffering from bitrot and neglect.

Lately, I've had the pleasure of talking to many people on IRC who have decided to learn Perl for various reasons, and some of them are young or even underage. Along with CPAN and perl5, Perl offers some clear advantages that no language has.

Again, Perl is also not about hype. Some people have privately raved about Perl and recommended it to their friends, but otherwise Perl was promoted quietly, bottom-up and mostly by word-of-mouth. It's hard to know if Perl will become the "hottest" language again. But I believe it will still become more popular, even among new programmers.

Inflation of Singers from Reality Shows

2008-06-19T08:02:17Z

As you may know, many countries hold reality shows / talent shows like American Idol or Fame Academy, in which singers compete to win a contract, and the top selections usually release singles or albums or otherwise become famous.

As a result there's now a huge inflation of such singers. For example, I have the following photo of Katharine McPhee, who was the runner-up on the fifth season of American Idol on virtual desktop #1. Moreover, I once asked Last.fm to play me one of her songs, and it wasn't too bad.

And finally, a Dutch friend of mine recommended this song called "Silencio" by David Bisbal, who was the finalist on the Operación Triunfo reality show, and went on a solo career. And it's a really good song.

Talking with a friend about the fact that Last.fm played me some Paris Hilton songs, of which I was fond of a few, he told me that he read somewhere that such celebrities-turned-singers have become the last amateurs because all the people from the reality shows have a lot of experience on their record after they become famous.

Oh well.

Linux Computer Was Dead

2008-06-16T15:14:14Z

In case you're wondering what happened to me the past few days (since about Thursday), I have the following news. The Power Supply and some of the ventilators of My Linux computer died, rendering it inoperational. So this heavily disrupted my work.

Today my father and I replaced the dysfunctional parts, and restored the computer. After we were able to turn it on, the network card was not recognised, but moving it to another slot got it working again. No damage was done to the hard-disks or any of the data.

That's all I wanted to say. Now, I have my Linux system back, and can work in comfort again.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapists' Summary

2008-06-08T08:06:39Z

I previously wrote to Linux-IL about me seeking a Cognitive-Behavioural Therpist in the Tel-Aviv area. I received several replies in private. Here is a summary of them:

I was referred to Mekhon Psagot, which has a clinique in Tel-Aviv, in the Rabin Square area. I went to a meeting with a therapist there on Thursday, and it went very well. Note that it was an ad-hoc meeting, until my usual therapist returns from abroad, and not the beginning of a permanent commitment.
Someone referred me to Mifne which are located in Haifa, so it was a bit too far.
Someone thanked me for my contributions to FOSS, and said he wished I'd be well. Such encouragement is always appreciated. Thanks.
I got some other emails.

Thanks to all the people who replied!

The Grammar Nazis Conspiracy

2008-06-04T09:17:38Z

Back in 2005, I wrote a message in Hebrew to the Hamakor discussions, noting that illegal copying of software, as undesirable as it may be, is not "stealing" or "theft". I signed my message "(The Semantics Nazi)" (in English).

Someone was offended, and after a brief discussion decided to publish this article on the front page of linmagazine.co.il (=an Israeli Linux news, blogs and forums site). The discussion is very amusing. Someone asked "What does it have to do with anything? Did Hitler use Linux?". Another one has misapplied Psalms 34, there, while I had to correct him. In any case, I haven't stopped calling myself and others "nazis".

Now it seems that Millie is a "Grammar nazi" and proud of it:

Since I am often correcting people's grammar, syntax, etc. (mostly in Hebrew), I also consider myself a Grammar nazi. So I've decided to form a conspiracy of:

Spelling nazis
Grammar nazis
Syntax nazis
Punctuation nazis
Idiomatic talk nazis
Semantics nazis
Netiquette nazis
Applied logic nazis (e.g: logical fallacies)

And may all "Anti-'nazi' nazis" be damned!

Here's for a better, clearer, and more correct human-to-human communication (in all languages). Note that I always appreciate reports on errors in my own text, which is especially problematic in English.

IRC Conversation: "Bunny" (Maybe Somewhat Offensive)

2008-06-03T10:18:35Z

IRC Conversation: "Bunny" (Maybe Somewhat Offensive)

This conversation took place on Freenode's #perl the other day. It's funny, so I wanted to share it here. Note that it may be somewhat offensive to some sensitive females (or sensitive males), but I think it's pretty harmless

-->	B-rabbit has joined #perl
  <rindolf>  B-rabbit? I know a B-rat on #linguistics.
 <B-rabbit>  rindolf, cool =]
  <rindolf>  B-rabbit: ok.
 <B-rabbit>  my full name is bunny rabbit bt w :)
 <B-rabbit>  hehe
  <rindolf>  B-rabbit: ah.
  <rindolf>  B-rabbit: "bunny" is a female name.
 <B-rabbit>  lol
  <pippijn>  rindolf: correct
  <pippijn>  I know a bunny
  <rindolf>  Or a Playboy bunny.
       <ik>  rindolf: bunny is a stripper name
  <pippijn>  friends call her bun
       <ik>  pippijn: is she a stripper?
 <B-rabbit>  rindolf, i am a male lol x sorry to disappoint u
  <rindolf>  "IRC: Where men are men, women are men, and the kids are
             FBI agents."
  <rindolf>  B-rabbit: ok, no problem.
       <ik>  pippijn: she should change her name
  <pippijn>  ik: it doesn't hurt her
       <ik>  pippijn: right, but she's violating a fundamental law
       <ik>  pippijn: she either needs to change her name or become a
             stripper
  <rindolf>  ik: I think the other option is better.
  <pippijn>  ik: she'd probably become a stripper rather than changing
             her name
  <rindolf>  pippijn: LOL.
       <ik>  rindolf: yeah, but you're creepy
  <rindolf>  I think I'll make a fortune out of it.

Cheers!

Israeli Independence Day Special: Enough with the Obsession With National Security! (English Transla

2008-05-11T16:03:08Z

Note: this is an English translation of a previous entry which was written in Hebrew especially for the Israeli Independence Day.

Happy Independence Day Everybody! I decided to write this entry for the Israeli Independence Day, but it is probable some of you will be pleased by it. The entry is written in Hebrew, due to patriotic feelings, but I'll probably translate it into English later and post it as a separate entry.

The story went like this: I talked with Peteris Krumins on Freenode, and he told me that he is about to graduate with his Bachelor Degree in Physics. (Good Luck and Mazal Tov!) In any case, we discussed graduation ceremonies in Israel and Latvia (which is Peteris's home-land), and he referred me to a few photos of a graduation ceremony in Latvia.

The first picture that caught my eye was this picture of several girls who were apparently about to receive their diploma. As one can see they are incredibly cute, but I found their costumes very funny in comparison to what I am familiar with. Peteris told me that these are standard formal costumes of girls there, and he asked me if I could find him photos of Israeli females in formal dresses.

So I went to Flickr and searched for "israeli girls", and what do I find? Uniforms upon uniforms. My eyes became black from all the Khaki. High-quality photos of good-looking female soldiers, but that's it - only soldiers. Peteris told me that these photos were a hit on Digg, Reddit and the rest of the social bookmarking sites, which may be the reason why Flickr ranks them so highly.

OK, a female solider in uniform (or a male soldier in uniform) is not such an uncommon sight in Israel, given that most girls serve in the military for two years starting from the age 18, and some of them also choose to become officers or serve permanently. But most of the women we see in Israel are not wearing uniforms. So this search in Flickr gives a false and political impression.

The search "israeli woman" does not display only soldiers, but it too has a very political orientation.

Now here's the substance of my complaint: I think Israel is perceived as a hyper-political and hyper-security-obsessed country, both by the citizens of the world and by its own. I'll give a few examples:

When I studied civics in the 11th grade, the Civics teacher (whom I remember quite fondly) asked the class to which committee of the Knesseth, the prime minister was obliged to be summoned, and the students said "The Committee of External Affairs and National Security". But, the correct committee was "The Committee for the Critique of the State", and the teacher noted that it was an indication that we perceive the national security as too important (and she noted that beforehand as well).
In this essay Paul Graham proved "scientifically" that it would be a pointless mission to establish a "Silicon Valley" (i.e: a hub of startups) in Israel. He probably didn't hear of companies such as Mirabilis, Check Point, Zend and many other examples of numerous, high-quality former Israeli startups. Most of the companies I have worked for as a programmer in Israel have been startups. There isn't a shortage of them, and there were many like that even during the recession.
When I wrote the entry "A Brief History of Linux in Israel" on the Hackers-IL wiki, I originally wrote that Israel had many problems including "heavy taxation, irrational and abundant regulations, quite a lot of terrorist activity, etc.". Someone (who I think was an Israeli) deleted what I wrote and left only the "large amount of terrorist activity".

With all due respect, the terrorist activity is not the worst problem that hurts Israel. More Israelis have died from road accidents and from smoking than from terrorist activity. And, as I noted, the high tax liability harms Israel much worse than the terrorist activity, and Israel won't lose anything (and will even greatly benefit) the more it will lower it.

Thus, the editing was misleading.
Too many foreign people I have talked with from outside Israel in Internet chats have asked me if Israel was safe. Apparently, their impression is that there is shooting in the streets, missiles falling everywhere and that Israel is not safe. But the reality is that most Israeli residents feel perfectly safe.

Naturally, I, too, am not a Tallith that's entirely azure. My first serious story was based on the political situation on the Israeli-Lebanese border, although in my defense I must say that it has a much more universal message. I have also written some essays about politics as well as many political posts on my blog, albeit not all of them are about the political-defensive state of Israel.

But I think that as a people, we Israelis are too obsessed with the military and the national security of Israel. If you ask me, the main reason our security status is so terrible is the fact that Israel has constitutional discrimination. Until we completely eliminate it, it will beget institutionalized and private discrimination and racism, as well as non-supportive treatment from even amongst the most liberal of the Arabs and the rest of the world's citizenry. And I'm saying this as a Jewish Israeli. If I may contort what Yoda said: "Do or do not. But don't do for a Jew and don't do for a Gentile, or vice versa."

As Israelis in Independence Day, we should remember that the IDF and the National Security are a means, not an end. The end is that the citizens of Israel would be able to live good, peaceful, happy and prosperous lives. Happy Independence Day to all Israeli Residents!

רשומה לכבוד יום העצמאות: מספיק עם ההתעסקות בבטחון!

2008-05-07T19:36:35Z

יום עצמאות שמח לכולם! החלטתי לכתוב רשומה זאת לכבוד יום העצמאות, אבל קרוב לודאי שחלקכם לא תהיו מרוצים ממנה. הרשומה כתובה בעברית, מתוך רגשות פטריוטיות, אבל קרוב לודאי שאתרגם אותה אחר-כך לאנגלית ואדביק אותה כרשומה נפרדת.

מעשה שהיה כך היה: דיברתי עם פטריס קרומינס בפרינוד, והוא סיפר לי שהוא עתיד בקרוב לסיים את התואר הראשון שלו בפיזיקה. (בהצלחה ומזל טוב!) בכל מקרה, דיברנו על טקסי סיום בישראל ובלטביה (שהיא ארץ מושבו של פטריס) והוא הראה לי מספר תמונות של טקס סיום מלטביה.

התמונה הראשונה שלכדה את עיניי הייתה תמונה זאת של מספר בנות שככל הנראה עמדו לקבל את התעודה. כפי שניתן לראות הן חמודות לאללה, אבל אני מצאתי את התלבושות שלהן מצחיקות למדי ביחס למה שאני מכיר. פטריס סיפר לי שאלה תלבושות פורמליות רגילות של בחורות שם, והוא שאל אותי אם אוכל למצוא לו תמונות של בחורות ישראליות בתלבושות פורמליות.

טוב, ניגשתי לפליקר וחיפשתי "israeli girls" ומה אני רואה? מדים על גבי מדים. מרוב חאקי נהיה לי שחור בעיניים. תמונות באיכות טובה של חיילות נאות, אבל זהו - אך ורק חיילות. פטריס סיפר לי שאותן תמונות היו פופולריות ב-digg, ב-reddit ובכל שאר אתרי הקישורים החברתיים, ואולי זאת הסיבה מדוע פליקר מייחס להן חשיבות רבה כל כך.

טוב, חיילת במדים (או חייל זכר במדים) אינו מראה כל-כך נדיר בארץ בהתחשב בעובדה שמרבית הבנות משרתות בצבא שנתיים החל מגיל 18, וכן חלקן בוחרות לעשות גם קצונה או שירות קבע. אבל מרבית הנשים שרואים בארץ אינן לבושות במדים. כך שהחיפוש הזה בפליקר נותן רושם מטעה ופוליטי.

החיפוש "israeli woman" אינו מציג רק חיילות אבל הדף הראשון גם הוא פוליטי משהו.

עכשיו מגיע תוכן ההתלוננות שלי: לדעתי ישראל נתפסת כמדינה היפר-פוליטית והיפר-בטחונית הן בעיני תושבי העולם והן בעיני אזרחיה עצמה. אני אתן מספר דוגמאות:

כאשר למדתי אזרחות בכיתה י‎"א המורה לאזרחות (שאני זוכר די לטובה) שאלה את הכיתה לאיזו ועדה של הכנסת, ראש הממשלה מחויב להתייצב, והתלמידים ענו "ועדת החוץ והבטחון". אולם, הועדה הנכונה הייתה "הועדה לביקורת המדינה" והמורה העירה שזאת הייתה אינדיקציה שאנו תופסים את הבטחון כחשוב יתר על המידה (והיא העירה על כך גם לפני כן.)
במאמר הזה פול גרהם הוכיח "מדעית", שזאת תהיה משימה חסרת-טעם להקים "עמק סיליקון" בישראל - כלומר מרכז של סטארט-אפים. הוא כנראה לא שמע על חברות כמו מירביליס, צ'ק פוינט, זנד ועוד סטארט-אפים ישראליים רבים וטובים לשעבר. מרבית החברות שעבדתי בהן בתור מתכנת היו סטארט-אפים, ולא חסרות כאלן, וגם היו רבות כאלו גם בזמן המיתון.
כאשר כתבתי את הרשומה הסטוריה מקוצרת של לינוקס בישראל בויקי של Hackers-IL, כתבתי במקור שלישראל היו בעיות רבות וביניהן "מיסוי מרובה, רגולציה מרובה ולא רציונלית, כמות רבה של פעילות טרוריסטית וכו". מישהו (שאני חושב שהיה ישראלי) מחק את מה שכתבתי והשאיר רק את "הכמות הרבה של פעילות טרוריסטית".

עם כל הכבוד, הפעילות הטרוריסטית הרבה היא לא הבעייה החמורה ביותר שפוגעת בישראל. ישראלים רבים יותר מתו מתאונות דרכים ומעישון מאשר מפעילות טרור. וכאמור, לדעתי, כמות המיסוי האדירה פוגעת בישראל באופן ניכר הרבה מפעילות הטרור, וישראל לא תפסיד דבר (ואף תרוויח) ככל שהיא תצמצם אותה.

כך שהעריכה הייתה מטעה.
מספר רב מדי של אנשים זרים שדיברתי איתם מחו"ל בצ'אטים באינטרנט שאלו אותי אם ישראל בטוחה מספיק. ככל הנראה הרושם שלהם הוא שיש ירי ברחובות, וטילים בכל מקום, וישראל איננה בטוחה. אולם המציאות היא שמרבית תושבי ישראל מרגישים בטוחים מאוד.

כמובן, גם אני אינני טלית שכולה תכלת בנושא הזה. הסיפור הרציני הראשון שכתבתי היה מבוסס על המצב הפוליטי בגבול בין ישראל ולבנון, אם כי יאמר להגנתי שיש לו מסר הרבה יותר אוניברסלי. כמו-כן כתבתי מאמרים על פוליטיקה וכן רשומות פוליטיות רבות בבלוג שלי, אם כי לא כולן על המצב הפוליטי-בטחוני בישראל.

אבל אני חושב שיש לנו כעם אובססיה רבה מדי עם הצבא, והבטחון של ישראל. אם אתם שואלים לדעתי, הגורם העיקרי שמצבנו הבטחוני מעורער כל-כך היא העובדה שקיימת בישראל אפליה חוקתית. עד שלא נמגר אותה לחלוטין, היא תביא לאפליה ולגזענות רגילה, וכן ליחסים לא אוהדים גם בקרב הערבים ושאר תושבי-העולם הכי ליברליים. ואני אומר זאת כישראלי יהודי. אם לעוות את מה שיודה אמר: "עשה או אל תעשה. אבל אל תעשה ליהודי ולא תעשה לגוי, או להפך."

בכל מקרה, בתור ישראלים ביום העצמאות, אנחנו צריכים לזכור שהצבא והבטחון הם כלי ולא מטרה. המטרה היא שאזרחיה יוכלו לחיות חיים בשלום, שלוה, אושר ושגשוג. יום עצמאות שמח לכל תושבי ישראל!

Today is my Birthday

2008-05-05T15:23:41Z

I was born on 5 May, 1977, so today is my 31st Birthday. peachuk has already congratulated me on her blog (with a nice cartoon), and other people have already congratulated me on IRC and IM. Someone I know also wrote me something on Facebook, which I tend to dislike. Next time, an Email or an IM will do, but thanks.

I felt a bit depressed towards my birthday, but today I'm feeling great. Today was productive for me as I worked on an XML grammar for Unix-like fortune cookies. I learned RELAX NG in the process (and can recommend it) and made some progress, but it's still not ready for prime time.

I also chatted on the IRC a lot, and spent a lot of time explaining the essence of Perl 5's references to someone who only knew Unix Shell and very minimal Python. I remember I had problems with C pointers back after I learnt BASIC, which didn't really have them, and still remember that I only truly understood references in Perl after learning some Java (and possibly also after reading SICP).

So I geeked out today. :-) For other events that had occured today see the Wikipedia.

Cheers! -- the 31-years old, Shlomi.

What Motivates People and How?

2008-05-01T15:44:31Z

I feel obliged to write a special entry for the Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Day which is today, so hopefully this will serve as such. However, it's probably not going to be what you expect.

My first question is the one in the title: what motivates people? Why do people do what they do? One of the most common myths about it is what I call "pseudo-Darwinism" - the belief that people ultimately do everything to have sex, or even to procreate. This was started by Sigmund Freud, and also popularised by the book The Selfish Gene (which I haven't read but seems very interesting). However, this makes many explanations for human behaviour very contrived ("You chat on instant messaging because you hope that one of the people in the conversation will give you a lead for a date with an attractive woman/man...") which don't make much sense. It also fails to explain why many people and even many mammals who were castarated or otherwise incapable of bringing offspring do not commit suicide and otherwise seem to lead a happier life. It also doesn't explain why many people marry and lead happy lives, but don't want to have children. (And sometimes also have abortions.) Or why some people become monks or nuns, or other clergymen who are forbidden from having sex.

Plus, many people who have been virgins for a long time, or alternatively have wonderful significant-others (and sex partners) whom they'll never wish to hurt, are still chatting on the IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and other IM services.

So it's not a very satisfying answer. But there's a more sensical explanation, and it actually heavily predates Darwin. In the first book of Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle claims that we perform certain actions for certain ends, and that these ends are also sometimes means to an end. But there must be an ultimate end, because otherwise everything will be meaningless.

He then claims that "happiness" is the ultimate end for most humans. Happiness can also be interpreted, or subtituted for "self-esteem", "pleasure", "joy", etc. depending on how you see it.

So what does it mean? We do what makes us feel good about ourselves. However, different people, and people at different times, have different actions that they deem as making them happier. This is often perfectly natural. I can sit at the computer most of the time, while just writing, chatting, or writing software. Other people don't seem to like it enough to do it all the time. Often, what makes us happy or our tastes is not a moral decision but an ammoral one (i.e: something that's neither moral nor immoral.).

As software developers, our job is to make sure people encounter as few frustrations as they can with our software. This means that the software will have good usability, that it will "just work", that it won't have bugs, and that if such problems are encountered they can easily be reported and dealt with.

If a software works according to our expectations, and does what we want - we'll feel happy. If it is too difficult to operate, lacks necessary features, has obscure and unhelpful documentation, or doesn't behave acccording to our expectations - we'll feel unhappy and helpless. As an example, I was searching CPAN for an IMAP module so I can get a list of all the From: addresses in my work's inbox. The first hits seemed overly complicated and required too much research. Then I found Email-Folder-IMAP whose synopsis had done something very similar to what I wanted. After pasting the code, changing it a bit and running it, I had got a list of all the from addresses. That has made me happy, and I was determined to use Email-Folder-IMAP from then on.

Back to the main subject - the main problem in the world is that some people derive pleasure from causing damage. For example, Genghis Khan has killed millions of people in his irrational and pointless conquests, just so he can feel good about himself. Adolf Hitler was similar too. The reason he decided to set the blame on the Jews and to kill over 20 million people in World-War-II was so he can feel good about himself. Also notice how he constantly shifted the blame to his and his people's problems from himself to members of other people, especially the Jews. Constantly blaming others or the world at large for one's own problems is a vestige of what Neo-Tech calls "The Criminal Mind".

Of course, even the Nazis were angels in comparison to 20th-century Communistic regimes who had been responsible for killing 100 million of the citizens of their own countries. Why? Because the leaders felt that they were conspiring against them, and that these victims prevent "future growth", but in fact because they felt pleasure of doing this.

No reason for any human-induced mass-destruction have ever existed except for the fact that the Charismatic leader was a destructive and evil person (a "mystic" in Neo-Tech terminology) who wanted to feel good about himself.

But naturally saying "Would you kill a million people so I can feel good" would not motivate anybody, they needed a "higher cause": "God", "the Aryan Race", "the nation", "justice" (not real Justice - more like an a collectivist revenge), "the Proletariat", etc. (And more recently "the Environment", "our security", "fighting the drug abusers" and other causes like that). But these causes are unnatural because there is no good reason to follow them.

Ayn Rand has identified that any aim to an unnatural altruistic cause, instead of the real cause which is the well-being, freedom and prosperity of the conscious individual, is in fact a recipe for disaster. By altruism she didn't mean willingly and rationally contributing to the well-being of another individual (or group of individuals) you care about, but rather claiming that one's life is worthless without contributing or even sacrificing to an external cause, be it "The poor", "the weak", "the nation", "the faith" or whatever.

As we remember the victims of the Nazis we should realise two things:

If the Germans would have cared about their own well-being, been logical and considered Hitler a stupid and irrational pip-squeak and nothing more, then World-War-II would not have happpened.
If the Jews (and other Nazi-opposers) realised they were in danger, and would have marched into Germany and kill everyone that looked like a Nazi, aiming to eventually kill Hitler himself, the War would have turned out much differently.

While I am a peaceful man, I am not a pacifist. I believe that when someone is in danger, they are allowed to exercise force against their oppressors. And sometimes it is necesary.

The issue is not the "strong-vs-the-weak" - it is the "noble-vs-the-evil", and ironically some of the causes that seem the most noble to us are in fact very harmful.

Now it is your mission to try to apply what I said here. Act for your own well-being and happiness. Oppose those people who tell you you should dedicate your life to them. Ridicule them. Insult them. Fight them. Laugh them out of existence.

Don't blame other people or the world at large for your own problems. Challenge every assumption. Make sure you have no prejudice or dogma. Understand that some people know more than you in some respects, and that even the most wise men can (and often do) learn from fools. Be fanatical for proper use of logic, which is the only valid tool that we have for judging what's correct and right and what's wrong and bad.

Don't be a slave to your emotions and feelings. A person who's behaving rationally will be happier in the long run than a person who's behaving irrationally, and will experience more feelings of joy, happiness and love. Your feelings are not facts and only reflect our thoughts, and general condition. While we want to be happy, we shouldn't make pleasure our master, but rather our servant in the ends for a better life.

Regards -- Shlomi Fish, The Eternal Jew.

Unattainable Goals that are Still Worth Pursuing

2008-04-28T07:46:54Z

One thought that occurred to me lately was the fact that there are some goals in life that can never be fully attained, but are nevertheless worth pursuing and getting nearer and nearer to them. Like an asymptotic function in mathematics if you may.

One example that I thought for it is the case of objectivity. Human beings are subjective by nature and so can never be completely objective. However, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to be as objective as possible, or completely give up on being objective. (And by being objective I don't mean having a neutral Point-of-View). Other people can disagree with me that objectivity is a virtue but it's besides the point.

Now a co-worker of mine is a Hasidic Jew, and when I told him that I'm an Objectivist, he said that one cannot be completely Objective. He then gave the fact that the Bible says that God brought the great drought because "Yetzer Lev ha'adam Ra' Mine'urav" (= the desire of the Human's heart is bad from his youth.), and later on decided not to do it again for a similar reason. He brought that as an indication that the Bible indicated that a man is not Objective by nature.

I thought about it for a moment and understood that the same can be said about honesty (or "righteousness" in a more religious language). We can never be completely honest and never lie or do the right thing everytime. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't constantly try to be as honest as possible, or worse succumb to complete dishonesty.

(I was told Immanuel Kant said something along the lines that if one wished, for example, to be sincere, he must not lie even if threatened by death. However, this is silly, because ethical and moral ideals are supposed to help you lead a happier life (as identified by Aristotle in the first book of "Nicomachean Ethics"), not to terminate them prematurely under someone who employs force or threat of force against you, when you otherwise did not do anything wrong.)

After I told it to my co-worker in an MSN Messenger conversation he agreed with me that I was right on both the honesty aspect and, in accordance with the principle, also the Objectivity one.

This concept can be applied to many other values or capabilities we desire. For example, one can always improve as a programmer, which is evident by the fact that most good programmers who take a look at their old code are unhappy with it. But it doesn't mean we shouldn't try to always improve as programmers.

Likewise, if a particular computing technology is large (e.g: Perl, Java, PHP, .NET) and also has possibly spanned a large number of halo technologies (e.g: CPAN, Apache Jakarta, etc.), then mastering the core language would be hard, and time consuming. In the Perl world we constantly say that "no one knows all of Perl, not even Larry Wall". But it doesn't mean you shouldn't do your best to master as much as you can out of it, or need to.

One example that I'm especially sensitive about is politics in a software project (possibly an open-source one ). Obviously, there can never be zero politics, but the project leaders and members should always try to reduce its amount, because not keeping it at bay is a recipe for disaster. I constantly hear about important features that are not implemented or even bugs that are left unfixed in open-source projects due to political reasons.

I can give Subversion and to a lesser extent the perl5-core development tools as good examples of projects with very little politics and a value-maximising attitude.

One can think of many other examples.

My point is that while it is true that we are humans and can never be perfect, we should always aim for perfection in some aspects. And given enough willingness and by learning from our mistakes, we can remain close to perfection in those respects all the time.

"Free" and "Freedom" in Hebrew (and English)

2008-04-21T19:36:15Z

By inspiration from Passover, which celebrates the end of the Egyptian Jewish slavery, and by some inspiration from what David A. Wheeler wrote about the meanings of free in English, I present to you some non-professional philological study of the meanings of "Free" and "Freedom" in Hebrew and English.

First of all, there are two ways to say "freedom" in Hebrew: "Hhofesh" (חופש) and "Hherouth" (חרות). The double-h is my way of indicating a "Hheth", which is similar to the "kh" in "Khan" or the Spanish "j", but even more throaty when pronounced correctly.

Now, "Hhofesh" means Freedom, while "Hherouth" is even stronger, and means something closer to "liberty" in English, but probably not exactly the same. A free person (or a thing) is "Hhofshi" (in Singular Masculine form, other forms differ slightly), while I didn't hear the word "Herouthi" used often. Instead one can say that someone is a "Ben-Horin" (i.e: "son [or belongs to a people of] of free people."), which is probably the etymology for "Ben-Hur".

While "Herouth" is mostly limited to the liberty of a people or inidividuals, and is considered high language, "Hhofshi" is more disputed. It can naturally mean "libre" or free-from-oppression. But "Hhofesh" or "Hhufshah" also means vacation in Hebrew (like "Hahhofesh hagadol" (the big "Hhofseh") - which is the Hebrew name for the Summer vacation.) And so Hhofshi is sometimes applied to a person who is relieved of work, education or other responsibilities (such as that of a spouse), even though it is understood that it is not an exact meaning.

More recently, "Hhofshi" also started to be applied to "gratis", "costless" or "on-the-house" commodities similar to the "free-as-in-free-beer" distinction. For example, in Falafel stands, one often hears that the extras are "Hhufshi" meaning one can take as much as they want to put in his Pitah-bread. This may have been an influence from English, but as I noted, "Hhofesh" in Hebrew has not been restricted to mean freedom from oppression ("free-as-in-free-speech") either.

One doesn't often hear people using "Hhofshi" for "lacking" as in "Caffeine-free", although that may also have become a bit more common lately. "Caffeine-free" is "Netol-caffeine" ("נטול-קפאין") in Hebrew, and one can also say "lelo kaffeine" ("ללא קפאין" without Caffeine) or "She'eyn bo kaffeine" ("שאין בו קפאין" "which doesn't have Caffeine" more or else) in certain contexts.

And I'd also like to stress the fact that "free" in English even in its more "libre" meaning, can be used either for freedom-from-oppression or freedom-from-responsibilities. If you value liberalism, you should try to use it only in the freedom-from-oppression sense.

Happy Passover (a.k.a the Festival of Liberty in Hebrew) everyone!

Boring Personal Update

2008-04-18T19:21:30Z

First of all happy Passover everyone! This year I'm getting this Sunday off, but not the rest of week (though some of my co-workers have taken a leave of absence).

I've been a bit stressed lately, probably due to work issue, but I think I'm happier and more focused now, and feel better. I went to bike today and took my usual To-Park-Hayarkon-and-Back route. It was not too hot and not too cold, and I enjoyed my ride, although felt I kinda drifted away in my thoughts, and didn't pay a lot of attention to my surroundings.

For a tech update: I've continuted to work on my homesite, on Perl Begin and on other projects, such as the Rethinking-CPAN effort. I was also able to overcome some GNU Autohell problems in Website Meta Language, in order to get some pending patches applied there. This is a temporary solution until I finish working on the more robust CMake-based configuration system, which would take a lot of time. I wasn't able to upload the archive yet, due to connectivity problems and some Berlios.de bugs, but I hope to resolve them soon enough.

I have several ideas for essays or mini-essays I'd like to work on - mostly technical. And I accumulated a backlog of 415 (now 387) entries on my web feed aggregator.

In any case, I hope you all are doing well. I have a few blog entries in the queue, and if all goes well, I'll post them soon. Bye!

Daily Ride from Tel Aviv to the Ra'anana Industrial Zone

2008-03-25T21:54:30Z

Hi all. Is anyone who is reading this can give me a ride from Northern Tel Aviv (the junction of Qeren Qayemeth Bvd. and Ayalon or Haifa Road would be fine), to the Ra'anana Industrial Zone on weekdays? Any pointers would be appreciated. Please contact me on my email or my cell (054-6232377) if you can help.

Thanks in advance - Shlomi Fish.

Rave about FIBI's Firefox Support

2008-03-19T21:09:08Z

I reported earlier that I switched to the First International Bank of Israel (FIBI) because its site was designed and maintained with cross-browser compatibility in mind. Recently, I tested it by doing two monetary operations using the web-interface and using the Firefox browser on Linux. The first one was a money transfer to pay for the Israeli Perl Workshop. The second was transferring funds into savings.

I'm happy to say that they I was able to perform both smoothly and without a hitch. (I received a request for confirmation about the money transfer to my cellphone, but wasn't particularly bothered with it.) so I'd like to thank FIBI for maintaing such good web service and for being conscious with it, and would like to note that I'm happy I made the switch. The web service has saved me two trips to the bank branch during work hours, and will probably save more like that in the future.

I hope other web service providers will consider adopting cross-browser compatibility of their sites, and adherence to web-standards and to portable behaviour. Firefox has excellent web-development tools, and is much less buggy than Internet Explorer, and adding support to it should not be too hard with help from web resources and from web development forums.

Petition against Copyright Extension

2008-02-29T17:18:01Z

open-dot-dot-dot reports about a petition against extending the Copyright term, that is open for anyone to sign. Please sign it and help spread the word.

Best Reggae Song Ever?

2008-02-29T17:12:28Z

I must have listened to this song (Link to YouTube video) over 30 times the past few days. It's very nice.

Dear Lazyweb, Where Can I Play Kakuro?

2008-02-23T10:55:03Z

Dear Lazyweb,

can anyone recommend a good web-site where I can play Kakuro online with convenience? I wasn't able to find anything good yet in a Google Search, but will keep trying. Alternatively, an open-source program that I can run on Linux will be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Personal Log: Report on the Last Days

2008-01-21T20:47:05Z

I started working on Sunday, a week and a day ago. It's a (paid) one month trial so both sides can see if they are happy with the arrangement. I'm working as a Linux C++ server programmer for Emblaze. So far I'm mostly happy with the job.

On Saturday I met with peachuk and TDDPirate on the University Café close to my home. Peach has been visiting Israel and wanted to meet us (we met online on IRC and MSN Messenger), and we decided to arrange a meeting. Since TDDPirate is deaf, I brought a laptop from home to facilitate communication with him, but I couldn't turn it on after we met. As it evidently turned out, its battery was dead. (I was worried that my back will hurt from carrying it, but thankfully it still doesn't.). So we had to do with a pad of paper.

We ate dinner there and had a nice conversation. Peach seemed different in real life, than her Instant Messaging persona, and I was happy to meet TDDPirate again.

Yesterday was an eventful day. In the morning, I was dismayed to discover that my cellphone had a low battery, because it wasn't charged properly. Then at lunch, I accidently ate some fava beans at lunch, which I might be allergic to due to G6PD. So far, I'm OK, though.

Then I left work early to go to a Tel Aviv Linux Club meeting. When I arrived at the final bus station, I noticed that I could not feel my watch. As I discovered, its chain broke, but I still have both pieces at home. I attended the talk which was about open-source Geographic Information Systems, and included many nifty and visual presentations.

That's it for real life. Otherwise, the Mandriva Cooker Linux distribution at home, recently upgraded perl to version 5.10.0, which caused many software packages there to become broken because they relied on it being the previous version (5.8.8). I had to fix some of the problems on my system myself, while submitting or reporting them to the distributor for inclusion. At work I'm now using Ubuntu Gutsy, which has its own share of bugs that are almost, but not quite, entirely unlike the Mandriva ones.

One of the things that got broken was Website Meta Language, which is an HTML preprocessor I'm using for all my sites. I've hacked a quick patch to build it, but since now the GNU Autotools setup for it has also become broken, I've decided to ditch them in favour of CMake. So far, CMake seems nice, but I only really started with the conversion process.

Tip: Dedicated Last.fm Client

2008-01-04T18:28:23Z

Last.fm is a music service that learns what you like and plays appropriate songs and lets you choose songs based on taxonomy. I used to listen to it using the KDE Amarok player which is otherwise excellent, but its Last.fm playback is often buggy.

A few days ago I decided to see if there's a better client out there, so I searched for "Last.fm Linux client" and ended up at this page for the official Last.fm client for Linux. It's open-source and free of malware, and works much better than Amarok. I installed it on Mandriva using the "urpmi lastfm-player" command, and there are probably packages for other distributions.

There are similar clients for Windows and Mac OS X. This client works much better than Amarok and I find Last.fm much more enjoyable now. But I guess I'll now have to debug the Last.fm support of Amarok on my machine to see where things go awry.

Happy listening!

More Media Recommendations

2007-12-21T11:08:29Z

As promised, here are more media recommendations.

This video of building a Lego Star destroyer is amusing. David Cho sings "You Tube" (A Love Song), which he wrote. And here's the Rogue Traders performing "Voodoo Child" live, which I misplaced and then found again.

Here's an audition from Australian Idol by an acapella Virtuoso.

"All Saints - I know where it's at" - one of my favourite songs. And here is their song "If you want to party (I found lovin') which I discovered on YouTube.

"Big City Life" by Mattafix is a song I heard on the radio the other day, and found on YouTube. I don't seem to remember it from when it was a hit.

There's a series of "PC vs Mac" videos on YouTube as a counteraction to the Apple "I'm a PC, and I'm a Mac" videos.

This is what you do to type a document corrrectly.

Here's a nice Soul Music Video called "100 Days, 100 Nights". It was recorded and filmed recently, but is done in an old style.

By the way, I noticed that many YouTube videos I linked to in this blog, have disappeared from YouTube. That's a shame.

New Wallpapers

2007-12-12T08:08:43Z

My home computer's KDE desktop has 8 virtual desktops, on which I can place windows. Every once in a while, I change their wallpapers. I recently changed them and in this post would like to list the wallpapers that I've chosen and where I found them.

Desktop #1 - Natalie Portman with blond hair (and brown eyes) from skins.be. skins.be went offline for some time now, and now returned, and this delayed this post.
Desktop #2 - bosco (Forest scene) from KDE-Look. One problem I have with this picture is that it doesn't fit the whole screen, and as a result, I have the light-coloured top of the photo at the bottom of the screen, which interferes with my transparent taskbar's minimised tasks.
Desktop #3 - Photo of Anne Hathaway. I initially feared parts of this picture will be too blurry, but it turned out to be fine.
Desktop #4 - A Photo of Two Eagles from hvhe1 from Flickr. Lots of other beautiful shots of animals in her photo stream.
Desktop #5 - Portia by Joanna Konstantinea found at this computer art competition (which I blogged about before)
Desktop #6 - "Purple Flowers" by Lisa Derfler found on digitalart.org.
Desktop #7 - A photo of Charlize Theron, also from Skins.be.
Desktop #8 - A "Red Stone" picture taken from Wallpaper Pimper, which is a new site I discovered for wallpapers. Red Stone is a game, which even has the first hit on Google for the query "Red Stone" but Wikipedia does not know about.

Media Recommendations

2007-12-04T20:16:07Z

I have a lot of individual media recommendations (mainly YouTube videos) in my queue, clogging my bookmarks menu. Thus, while I'm waiting for kernel 2.6.24-rc4 to compile, I'd like to start putting them here. If I feel this entry's too long, there may be some more with more recommendations shortly. I'll see.

I found a lovely set of screencasts from Final Fantasy X arranged to the music of "Paradisio, Bailando". It's much better and much less disturbing than what seems to be the original video-clip of the song.

Here's a Anime video clip of The Frey - In Over my head (Cable Car). Nice song and nice animation that goes with it.

It's kind-of-lame, but I still liked this video of GreenTeaGirlie dancing to the Lucky Star by Karma Club. There's a strange story behind GreenTeaGirlie, but I liked the video and the music irrespectively of it.

I can also recommend new single of the Spice Girls called "Headlines".

Finally, there's Babysitting Blues from the movie "Adventures in Babysitting". That was the best part of the film, and I found it as good as I remembered it. "Nobody leaves this place without singing the Blues!"

That's it for now. Now I got to reboot to the new kernel. I still have more recommendations in queue, and I'll enumerate them later.

I Biked Today

2007-12-01T16:25:23Z

I went out biking today, after not biking for a long time. The weather was nice, and I was able to were "training" clothes for most of the ride. At the beginning of the ride, I took a break and pushed the bike by foot. It's been a while since I needed to, which may indicate that I'm out of shape.

I saw many people in the park, including some good-looking girls. After the park, near the "Ha'aretz" Museum, I felt that my head, and upper body were on fire, so I took off my sweatshirt, and rode the rest of the cycle with only my T-shirt.

It feels good to having biked, and I now feel calmer and more focused. I should do it more often.

Politics: Canadian DMCA Law + Saddam Hussein's Support of Terror

2007-11-30T14:02:57Z

Slashdot Reports that there's a very bad DMCA-like Candian Copyright Act brewing. Michael Geist has 30 things that Canadian can do to stop it.

That put aside, I'd like to quote something that a U.S. Soldier who had been serving in Iraq told us about Saddam Hussein's support of terrorish activity, which has changed a mistaken perception of mine:

Me: Yes, but Bush claimed that he needed to attack Iraq because it supported terrorism, which wasn't really true. Iraq was not a threat to worldwide well-being. As opposed to say, Iran.

Soldier: Shlomi, actually that's not true... i'm not a huge fan of bush either, but i will say that i have personally been involved in well over 5 dozen raids that involved terrorist training camps in major iraqi cities.

Me: I see. I believe you.

Soldier: Shlomi, the thing about Iraq is this, it was being used as staging ground for Iran and Syria terrorist units, also... a special unit was trained here called the Al Kud, that was specifically trained to attack Israel.

Someone else: Yeah, but did those terrist camps exist *before* the invasion?

Soldier: Someone else, yes they did. Someone else, there are few if any terrorist camps in Iraq at this time. Most are trained outside of Iraq. In fact the majority (and i say 90%) of all terrorist activity here in Iraq is from outside nations, not local Iraqi nationals.