.::output >> /dev/null::.

Instead of doing a half decent job of explaining what the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) is all about, I would redirect you instead to its excellent entry on wikipedia.

More importantly, the FSM is not an attack on Christianity or any other religion. Its main purpose (and the one which I subscribe to) is to let people know that teaching the alternative theory of Intelligent Design in schools will only exposed students to one theory of Intelligent Design. Thus, the creator of FSM, Bobby Henderson came up with his idea of an intelligent designer, the FSM. And he contends that since Intelligent Design is all about teaching an alternative form of human design, the FSM should be included as part of. And if FSM is one of it, then every other religion, belief, conjecture out there also deserve some mention in classrooms. So, there is no end to what it means by Intelligent Design.

And just for kicks, here are parts of the FSM belief:

• Prayers to "Him" are typically ended by "Ramen", instead of "Amen".
• The monster continues to guide human affairs with his "noodly appendage".

If they can somehow find a way to teach the theory of Intelligent Design without having it being monopolized by any one religion, then by all means go ahead and do so. Again, it seems more troublesome than it is worth. People who actually care about Intelligent Design would have already joined a religion. And those who do not will also argue vehemently against it.

So while, religion and Christianity is a good thing, they should NOT be incorporated in public or private schools. Leave such things to Sunday School where they belong. And while we are at it, let us keep the word God out of all public speeches here. Since whenever anyone uses the word God here, it usually just means the Christian God. No one else is so bold as to profess about their God except the Christians.

Flock, Under Those Feathers at PaulStamatiou.com:

"Flock is the latest open source browser, catering especially to bloggers and Web 2.0 savvy users. It is heavily based upon open source code from Mozilla’s Firefox browser and was developed by a group of a 10 guys and a gal in a garage in Palo Alto, California (with lots of contributions from many developers). Flock promises to leave the user with a strong social web browsing experience. With bookmark syncing with del.icio.us, integrated blogging and flickr support, Flock looks like a real treat. But be warned, in this early developer preview there are some nasty bugs and lacking features that should be a must if Flock hopes to lure current Firefox users."

(Via Digg.)

I actually have a temporary blog set up to blog about Flock (I removed it since it was just taking up useless space and I have not maintained it for a while). Or rather just to try out its built-in blogging feature. I really like the concept that they are setting up but Flock, like Firefox does not give me an authentic Mac feel.Speaking of Web 2.0, some people have the guts (I mean this in a good way) to actually point out that it may all just be hype.

The Furrygoat Experience: Web 2.0: Just Say No:

"As I mentioned a few days ago, I'm pretty tired of 'Web 2.0'. Glad to hear Joel taking a stand against it, and frankly I agree - I'm not going to mention it again on Furrygoat.com (maybe if we ignore it, it will just go away :))."

For all we know, Web 2.0 might turn out to be something that no one is going to care about. Not that it matters to me since I am pretty pleased with what I am seeing. Just that they hyperbole surrounding it makes it seem more phenomenal than it really is.

Java Tunnel Vision [@lesscode.org]:

"I've spent exorbitant amounts of time in the past six-seven years doing endless research around Java community, relentlessly chasing the elusive dream of the possibility of developing apps in a simple, straightforward way. I've tried all the latest and the greatest Java hype, followed religiously every Javaworld and The Server Side and Artima article, but only to in the end throw my hands up in the air in utter desperation. After all was said and done, at the end of the day, all I have is an enormously bloated, to the point of bursting at the seams, Eclipse platform. I am currently nursing countless frameworks, plug-ins, SOA and EMF bullshit is coming out of my ears. My 60 GB laptop with 1 GB main memory cannot take it any more."

I feel extremely uncomfortable with this situation. I don’t think we, as a community of Java developers, are standing on the solid, firm ground. I think the ground on which we stand is bound to give in under our feet, sooner or later. This is why I’m trying to defect to the Ruby camp, where life is simpler, the air is fresher, and the movement is truly, not nominally, agile.

There is an interesting book called Beyond Java that I really want to read now.

Kathy Sierra posted some updates for the Sun Java Programmer Certification (SCJP) exam. Seems that this time, question will focus on some of the newer features of Java 5 a.k.a. Tiger. Some of the questions are really tied to the newer features of the language which I have yet to see. Partially because there is no official Java 1.5 for Mac OS X yet. Even then, I have yet to see any new code take advantage of these features. You can check out some of the questions here.

I am sure that the purpose of the exam is to certify that you have indeed achieved mastery of the language. However, how is this a useful measurement for your programming skills? Especially since language features are bound to change every now and then. I mean even an old language such as Fortran has been revised several time (F77, F90, Fortran 2003, etc). Chasing the newest features of the language does not seem to be a very practical nor sought-after skill. I mean a good programmer can always pick up such things by reading documentations or just reading other people's code. My professor, of whom I am a teaching assistant for, makes this point by not teaching advanced features of assembly language. He justifies this by teaching only the skills that are going to outlive the features of the x86 instruction set; skills such as writing clear code, debugging code and working in teams. Personally, I would be very wary if the company I wish to work for requires that you are a certified Java/Lisp/.NET developer. Well, maybe .NET might be OK since .NET is a behemoth of a framework and has a lot to offer (and require from its developers).

Of course, being certified does have a certain status associated with it. After all, it means that you have invested sweat and money going through piles of books that concentrate on one very small subset of development. So, you should be better than the fresh college graduate, right? Maybe. But I have never heard prominent figures such as Joel Spolsky and Eric Sink mention that they are going to require specific certification to be considered for a job. In fact what they look for are basic skills that transcend languages. After all, in a worse case scenario, features of the language can be simulated, albeit inelegantly, to serve its purpose. For instance, Java does not have closures (yet?) so make do with the anonymous inner classes.

So I am not really sure what one would want a certification in some language. Maybe being certified as a Microsoft Developer (MCSA, etc) might be more useful since it covers a myriad of skills that might actually be useful. Then again, real hackers have other ways to prove their skills: through ingenious code. Who's going to teach you that?

If I were going to take a certification exam in some language, it would probably be for 2 reasons: because I like the language so much that I feel that being certified shows my passion or because there is something that you can actually learn from that certification that you will find hard to learn unless you spend 2 years on the job. Getting a certification because of a job seems like a weak motivation for me (as of now, but things might change when I really need to get a job).

Of course, it could also be another form of passion, as Vendor Wars [@lesscode.org] points out:

"I've always found it curious how easy it is to recruit foot soldiers for a particular vendor. There never seems to be shortage of Microsoft or Java or Oracle etc. apologists, who are canvassing the tradeshows, propagating the vendor of their choice. They appear as if they're working for their sweetheart vendor, but what's fascinating is that all these Herculean efforts are voluntary. No one pays them to do all the free marketing and advertising for Microsoft, Java, Oracle, IBM...

Why would someone sacrifice so much of their lives to serve some giant vendor? I must honestly say I really don't understand the motivation behind that. However, it neatly explains why so many developers are happily embracing the morecode gospel."

Looks good enough. And you can even integrate it with Google Talk. What I really like, its handiness. After all, how much more handy can you get besides having it on the right side of the screen? It would be better if you can auto-hide it though. The scratch pad really comes in handy. But the QuickView function is something that I think will be really useful. It stores all your just frequently accessed (or recently) files and web sites.

Of course, with this new product, Google begins to encroach on different turfs. Some argue that Google is becoming evil or, horrors, the next Microsoft. And in fact, they argue that Google is even more dangerous since it indexes your searches, your e-mail and whatever else you access using its services. Well, even Microsoft has really good stuff now and then. So evil might be tolerable to a certain extent.

Though the fact that they are requesting your cell phone number as a safe way to prevent people from creating multiple gmail accounts is still questionable. After all, what would they do with those numbers? You think they are going to dispose of them once they send you the pass key? Think about it. Your number is more important to you than some e-mail address (especially one that is created for free). More details on the always excellent O'Reilly Radar.

My professor showed some everyday instances that we take for granted and convincingly show why it is hard to get a machine to behave like a human being. Naturally, he showed some rather interesting optical illusions. Since they are optical illusions, is there any need to replicated this behavior in an intelligent and rational agent? After all, are they any benefits for seeing these illusions? Does seeing these illusions make humans more intelligent? Or does it suggest a deeper understanding of how the human mind really works? Well, before this gets too philosophical, it would be wise to get back to the point and show you some of the examples that I find interesting.

Because I am afraid that the links might actually go missing, I have uploaded the pictures to my flickr account and gave proper credits to the authors. Most of these are also available from the Mind Hacks book which I have been trying hopelessly to finish. Whenever possible, the images link back to the original image on their respective websites. If anyone feels that I have violated their copyright, I will gladly remove these pictures.

• 
  Why does it appear correct when viewed upside down but totally wrong when viewed the right side up?
• 
  A and B have the same color and shade! Don't believe me? Click here. This is called the Adelson Checker Shadow Illusion.
• 
  You have to click on it to see the BIG version for the illusion to work.

Another interesting thing I have learned are Garden Path Sentences. Here are some of the more interesting ones that are hard to decipher.

• Fat people eat accumulates.
  The fat (animal fat, vegetable fat, etc) that people eat accumulates in their bodies.
• The prime number few.
  The prime (or the prime numbers e.g. 2, 3, 7, 11) amount to only a few.
• The player kicked the ball kicked the ball.
  The player was given the ball by someone who kicked it to him. The player then kicked the ball back.

Well, that was an interesting first lecture for that class. Maybe there are more illusions worth sharing later as well.

every other corporation out there is using it to promote their stuff, including the National Guard.

Obviously, Napster is not doing that well (yet?)

Gluttonous:

"So really, what is a symbol? Simply, a symbol is something that you use to represent names and strings. What this boils down to is a way to efficiently have descriptive names while saving the space one would use to generate a string for each naming instance."

(Via If You Don't Get Symbols.)

This is a really informative post on Ruby and symbols. And there is enough of why's influence to make it an easy read. Bottom line, if you want to save some memory space use symbols especially as keys for hashes.

VitalSource Technologies, Inc. - Download VitalSource Bookshelf:

VitalSource launches digital bookstore | MacMinute News:

"The Store offers more than 1,000 titles in the VitalBook digital format, starting from US$0.99 to 60 percent off list price of hardcopy versions. The growing inventory of VitalBooks includes classics such as Shakespeare, reference materials, and textbooks in subjects ranging from law to philosophy to medicine."

I think that VitalSource has a bright idea here. By making the books available in electronic format, they are able to bring the prices down. Also, it gives educators an easy channel to distribute their teaching and learning material--though I am still uncertain how easy it is to convert materials to the VitalSource format. Anyway, I am extremely glad that they did not promote their technology as pushing for the digital revolution. For a more thorough discussion of the mythical paperless society, please read Malcolm Gladwell's excellent article published in the New Yorker.

However, VitalSource seems to be distributing their books in some in-house proprietary format. This might or might not have been avoidable given how easy it is to pirate e-books. So, VitalSource's decision is justified.

Nonetheless, using their own format instead of something more commonplace such as PDF severely limits what the readers can do with the book. So far, most of the books available only have lots and lots of text in them (no pictures) so this might not matter much. Nevertheless, I like to be able to annotate my e-books. And sometimes I do not wish to be limited to highlighting, even if it is with different colors. I need to be able to include links to pages, maybe even pictures. And I would like to share my annotations with other people. Vitalsource Bookshelf does not seem to allow me to do those things. There might be good reasons for this since younger children are actually using the program, so there is no need to make things too complicated.

Also, other operating systems are not supported. I know that almost 90% of the computer users use Windows or Mac OS X. But most computer science geeks use Linux. And they do not fancy having to read their books in some beautiful GUI window. At most, they would settle for postscript or pdf but not some funky new format. This really hinders VitalSource from being adopted in most universities. Well, maybe VitalSource never intended for this service to be used everywhere. Anyway, VitalSource definitely does not appeal to everyone. Since they are giving the VitalSource Bookshelf application free, their sole revenue depends on the sales of books. So, either they have a large consumer market, or they are maybe going to roll out a more powerful version of their application that would enable readers to do more with their e-books.

Here are some comments on their tagline: "Buy your books like you buy your music". Buying books and listening to music are too different things. When I listen to music, I do not need to take annotations! When I read books which I deem important, annotations are a must. And I can bring my music with me, be it in a CD or iPod. With VitalSource, I need to have the VitalSource Bookshelf program. And unlike, PDF or Word documents, I cannot even put it into my Palm or cell phone. Furthermore, there is still some solace in being able to curl up with a good book in bed. Sometimes, bringing my laptop to bed does not seems like such a good idea. So you would never buy books like you do music.

Also, by tying the book to one account, I think VitalSource limits you from sharing the book with your families. While I studied in my home country, I usually pass my books to my younger brother or cousins. Since textbooks really do not change that much, we managed to save a decent amount each year. Also, my brother would benefit from the notes that I took.

Installation of VitalSource Bookshelf was via a .mpkg file. As advised by rixstep there is seriously no need to distribute applications in this manner. Anyway, the installation created a bunch of folders at places that I really would not like to have them. For instance, it created the Books folder in /Users/Shared. I can understand the rational behind this since you need to be able to share books with different users, each user having a separate account on VitalSource, I assume (or maybe a main account for the entire class). It also created a Books folder in my home directory where it stores the notes that I have made. So maybe there is indeed a way to share notes with people. Bottom line, uninstalling this program is not going to be as simple as dragging the application to the trash. Maybe there is an uninstaller for the Windows version.

Even though the VitalSource Bookshelf for Mac OS X looks polished, its functionality is still too handicapped for most people. For the time being, all you can do with an e-book is to highlight the text in it, add notes to it, or search through it. Of course, you get to use the back and forward buttons to navigate too. You can drag and copy the images that are inside the e-book into another application. On Mac OS X, dragging the picture to the desktop identifies it as a Picture Clipping. Each book appears in a separate window. One good thing is that you can backup the notes that you have made. Backups are saved as .db files which in the sqlite2.1 format.

While this might not prevent piracy, what VitalSource can do is adopt what the Pragmatic Programmers LLC does with its e-book: personalized it with your name. My PickAxe and Rails book both have the line: Prepared Exclusively for..."your name here" as the footer.

By the way, the only reason I took interest in VitalSource was not because of their catchy tagline: "Buy your books like you buy your music" but because James Duncan Davidson helped develop the web backend for it using Ruby on Rails. And he did an impressive job on the website. Still, I think that VitalSource is indeed a good idea. And the fact the VitalSource has gotten Apple and IBM to participate does give it some realistic backing. It's just that I doubt that many publishers would want to use VitalSource to deliver their contents. I cannot imagine O'Reilly doing it.

Now, on to uninstalling it!

Anyway get the true story here