Ruby is one of those languages that i look at now and then but never plunge in. It's hard when you have something as beautiful as Scheme around. But i must admit Ruby has its charms; for instance, some of its smalltalkish features are interesting. And there's a little application that i happen to like, Alexandria, that's written in Ruby. So, i've been browsing around lately, and i've found a really charming online book, why's (poignant) guide to Ruby, which is worth a look even if you're not specially interested in the language. Just go there and you'll see what i mean.
Listen to RMS interviewed on the GNU/Linux User Show in OGG format in this podcast.
An interesting viewpoint on creationist claims.
What Is the X Window System, by Ellen Siever, discusses the history of X. Developed at MIT in 1984, the X Window System, now up to X11 release 6, or X11R6, has been the standard environment for Unix windowing systems. Ellen Siever provides some historical context for X's staying power, then discusses its major features: working with X and the X server and X clients; configuring X; and much more. Ellen is a coauthor of Linux in a Nutshell, 5th Edition.
If you follow the link to the article, you'll notice a link near the top that goes with the name Blog This... the above paragrah is, basically, the result of clicking it. Nifty.
Group theory is a beautiful, if arid, branch of mathematics, and a basic acquaintance with it comes in handy in many situations (including Computer Science). If you're put to sleep by maths books, you can learn a lot about group theory (and have a fun time) with a little matress flipping, rolling and yawing.
My constant window manager odyssey had to head me, sooner or later, to ratpoison. More so since i am irrevocably addicted to running emacs in a terminal (it's boosting my productivity to unpredictable limits, you should try it). When you need little more than a way to sparely run Firefox or Alexandria, and have a pretty background image, what else could you do but this:
? Yes, that's a screenshot of my whole desktop, not just the interior of the terminal running emacs :). And, if you're wondering how in Earth would anyone run, say, the Gimp in such an apparently minimal environment, see how forcer does it
Gabriella Coleman has spent more than two years among Debian hackers to write her Ph.D. dissertation, The Social Construction of Freedom in Free and Open Source Software: Hackers, Ethics, and the Liberal Tradition. She has made available a couple of PDFs, one with the prologue and table of contents, and another one containing chapter devoted to the Debian community. No need to be afraid: she has tried to make that contents accessible to hacker minds. From the prologue:
"My aim in this dissertation is to evaluate the rise of expressive rights among hackers as a historically and culturally specific practice of liberal freedom that can only be made sensible through the lens of a hacker technical way of life - in which their pragmatics and poetics are given serious consideration"
Recommended reading.
If you want a really original postcard, with a retro air, for that queer friend of yours, alltoflat has exactly what you need ... if you happen to be one of those guys, you can pick their wallpaper, or maybe you're a physicist on a Mac and will enjoy the particles screensaver.
I just found an interview with Tuomo Valkonen, the developer of one of those window manager i keep shuffling around: ion. As you will see, the guy has thought a lot about user interfaces. I sometimes disagree with his opinions, but they're worth musing about.
Need a zero-volume bottle? Searching for a one-sided surface? Want the ultimate in non-orientability?
Get an ACME KLEIN BOTTLE!
