If you're running Debian Sid on x86, you can get them by adding
deb http://people.debian.org/~dnusinow/xorg ./to your
/etc/apt/sources.list. Read the announcement of their
forthcoming appeareance on the unstable archives.
I probably don't need to convince you that software patents are evil. Just like copyright laws, they're widely used by megacorps to extend their 1984-like grasp on our society. If approved, the EU software patent directive would be another nail in our liberty's coffin. The arguments against patents are so crystal clear, so run-of-the-mill, that it's really hard to swallow that our politicians don't get them.
So, the news about the EU Parliament moving closer to rejection of the directive are, in my opinion, great news. Please, consider signing up to help.
UPDATE: The final vote was held on 6 July 2005, when Parliament rejected the proposal by a very large majority (648 to 14 in favour of rejection). Under the codecision procedure, the legislative process ends with this rejection and the proposal cannot now become law. More info on this excellent piece of news.
Finally I got, as an advanced birthday present, an iShuffle. A nice toy, specially now that I spend more than two hours a day in a bus to go to my new job's premises and back home. Since my proprietary software fever is over, iTunes was not an option and I needed some free programs to run it. I've been using Rhythmbox as my music player lately, and it has no problem accessing the iPod (after all, it's just a USB stick). One can also use gtkpod to save song lists, but I like the CLI-based gnupod utilities, which offer basic save/delete and search functionality. I will probably write some Scheme code in the not-so-far future to drive the (possibly random) filling of my iShuffle from my Rhythmbox database... and of course, I'll keep you posted!
The discussion about software patents and so called intellectual property 'rights' may seem to some a geeks passtime. Unfortunately, IP is not just about software; it's about liberty and, sometimes, about saving your live.
You can read all current draft chapters of Franklyn Turbak and David Gifford's Design Concepts in Programming Languages forthcoming book. It is a book based on MIT's graduate programming languages course (6.821). Many people helped in developing parts of the book, especially Mark Sheldon, Trevor Jim, Brian Reistad, and Jonathan Rees.
I have just skimmed over, but it looks like a really interesting reading.
These days I devote my hacking efforts to Conjure, a make(1) replacement written in Scheme. We have setup a nice portability framework which makes Conjure runnable in multiple Scheme implementations (MzScheme, Gauche, Guile and Scheme48, currently, but it shouldn't be difficult to add new ports).
Why a new make? Well, the draft Conjure User's Manual give some answers, as does this article by Adrian Neagu.
Currently, there's two conjurers (Rotty and yours truly), but if feel like joining the fun, we've got lots of work to do!
Dr. Vronky's program can read people's minds: can you figure out how? If you give up, click here to learn how.
(Via MathForge).
SICP and its videos are by now a classic and a must read/view for anybody taking programming seriously (and wanting to have real fun). I just discovered a talk by G. Sussman, on the legacy of Computer Science which is, again, excellent:
Computer Science is not a science, and its ultimate significance has little to do with computers. The computer revolution is a revolution in the way we think and in the way we express what we think.
Maxwell's demon is a theoretical device able to bypass the second law of thermodynamics, allowing anyone to produce unlimited free energy with the device. Until now, it has always been possible to prove theoretically that they couldn't be constructed, or would fail to function. kuro5hin is reporting about a claim to have constructed such a device. Where's the flaw?
So here we're again, with a new version of emacs-wiki-journal, and
after a long detour through the realms of propietary software. Despite
my claims to the contrary, I fell prey of Mac OS X charms, and have
been using it during the last months. This blog says it all.
Finally, I couldn't stand Apple's switch to Intel processors. My iBook has Debian again, Emacs's everywhere and I am relearning how to use a computer. I will refrain from more criticisms to the dark side until my faith proves strong enough. I just feel cleaner, and I am having fun.