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Quando un altro informatico mi pone questa domanda, per descrivere il mio lavoro di solito me la cavo con un paio di buzzword. :) Le cose diventano più complicate quando è una persona sana a chiederlo. :) Beh, credo di aver finalmente trovato una descrizione sufficientemente chiara per i profani:
Analizzo cose che non mi dicono e stimo progetti che non so (ancora) fare.
:)
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A quasi due anni dall’ultimo rilascio e dal successivo termine dello sviluppo di knopILS, ricevo ancora email con richieste di aiuto o, come solo ieri, di spedizione di CD da parte di persone che, evidentemente, non hanno molta banda a disposizione: continuo a rispondere alle email e spesso, per le richieste generali, indirizzando magari su live recenti come Knoppix o Kubuntu.
Sarebbe bello se trovassi qualcuno in grado di riprendere in mano il progetto.
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Avrei voluto lasciare un commento a Nicola ma la considerazione è più generale e merita quindi un post proprio. :)
Con un paio di amici ci chiedevamo appunto come potesse aver successo twitter, confermando ancora una volta la mia (e loro?) incapacità di riconoscere le idee di successo. Abbiamo ancora la pessima convinzione, forse perché eravamo tre ingegneri allo stesso tavolo, che si debbano fare cose “utili”: l’abbiamo giudicato superfluo e, quindi, destinato a fallire. C’è poco da fare: ci sono persone, come il sottoscritto, che possono passare, come passano, tutta la vita a lavorare in rete ma non sono state, non sono e non saranno in grado di riconoscere un’idea di successo se “non utile” (e purtroppo avrei parecchi casi della serie “le ultime parole famose”).
La verità è che la gente vuole far sapere agli altri che “scende il cane per pisciarlo” e questo dovremmo iniziare a considerarlo per il prossimo business plan. :)
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I wrote this simple Mediawiki extension that lists the directories contained in a hardwired directory: its output is like the following XHTML list:
<ul>
<li>http://www.foo.org/aaa/</li>
<li>http://www.foo.org/aab/</li>
<li>...</li>
<li>http://www.foo.org/zzz/</li>
</ul>
The directories are returned in the order in which they are stored by the filesystem. Change the values of $dir and $url_foo before using the extension.
I previously described how to PPP over GPRS via Bluetooth to a Sony-Ericsson K family mobile modem. With my previous K700i, using Dapper (I didn’t try with Edgy), talking to the modem via USB was very simple because the modem was reachable at /dev/ttyUSB0: the modem of my new K800i is reachable at /dev/ttyACM0 (I suppose that this switch is due to the changes made in Edgy/Feisty and that it is not on the K family side).
Using this new device, you can call pppd using this script.
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Domani non sarò all’Assemblea di Verona: ho chiesto al CD di poter continuare il lavoro sul wiki, portando avanti qualcosa di urgente per ILS ed evitandomi un giro di diciannove ore: voglio ringraziare ancora chi mi aveva proposto la propria delega perché fa davvero sempre piacere questo genere di manifestazioni di stima.
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Talking to some friends, today I wondered what English expression is close to the Italian “cani e porci” (yes, we were talking about a recent post). Later, I recalled two good candidates:
- “everybody and his dog” or “everybody and his kid sister” and so on (if you want to make fun of someone);
- “every mother’s son” (if you just want to say “absolutely everybody”)… that was, by the way, the title of a Traffic’s song.
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Da diversi giorni, un inquietante cartello mi avverte che
Causa sciopero, è finita la Repubblica
Inizio a temere l’occupazione sammarinese…
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As I previously wrote, I’ll try to summarise here the core points of his talk.
I can’t report everything he said but, rereading the notes I took, I think that two key points are the use of JSON and Zend Framework (New BSD License).
[C] refers to me and [X] refers to someone else.
- [C] What are the new features that the upcoming PHP 6 will offer that you are most interested in?
- He said that the main new features were the native Unicode support (of course), the new way to work with data (binary or text) and, for the upcoming PHP 5, the web services extension.
- [C] What are the distributed software versioning tools that you are most interested in? Does your company plan to support some of them?
- If I remember correctly, he said that they were working on a Zend “component” that would support the versioning tools supported by Eclipse.
- [C] Excluding web services, do you see any promising new ideas in the field of web based distributed computing?
- He found that the question was interesting and listed, among other things, virtual servers and their applications, web services themselves and ReST. About virtual servers, he stressed how easy it was to “move” them saving their state: when I stopped him by saying “Like a core dump in the old days…” he said “Exactly, exactly!”.
- [X] Some time ago PHP and Python were competing to be “the language for the web”. Now many people think that Ruby and the RoR framework are “the new boy in town”: how do you see the comparison between PHP and RoR?
- He said that RoR was a good framework and it did its job well. He said that obviously he liked PHP and its C-like syntax. He said also something about an upcoming component that helped to generate AJAX code only within PHP calls.
- [X] What do you think about Delphi for PHP?
- He said that he hadn’t tried it by himself but he thought that it was a good thing (excluding the fact that it was Windows-only).
- [X] (A question I don’t remember)
- He said something about QEDWiki.
- [X] A general question: which business and technical models do you see in the future of the web? Web2.0? Semantic web? Service oriented architectures?
- Talking about the business part of the question, he cited Google/YouTube, and in general, the services you could create with new technologies that you could use off-the-shelf.
- [C] In 1999 you were nominated for the FSF Award for the advancement of free software. Who do you think might win this year? Or who would you like to see winning the prize?
- He said he didn’t want “to make a problem with other people” so he didn’t want to say a name. He said he liked those who try to write the best possible software without the GNU religious approach.
After his talk, while I was shaking his hand, he said “good questions”. :)
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Driving in the countryside around Torino, I started thinking “Imagine being in the UK. Mmm… these woods seem different but who knows” and the answer came from a street sign: “None“. :)