HackNBlog @ Salamanteri Server

I have always (that is since I wrote my first lines of QBASIC code under MS-DOS 5.0) had interest to learn new programming languages, just out of interest towards programming as a hobby. Lately I have grown more and more interested on learning to program Common Lisp, a language highly praised by those using it but also one of those that has always looked way too cryptic for me (considering that I do know various different languages and rarely bump into one that I’m totally baffled about when looking at it :) ).

Now I have decided to find out what all the fuss is about and learn at least the basics of Common Lisp - however I’m having hard time finding a tutorial that is both good for someone who knows nothing about Lisp and does not stop after “Hello World” and couple simple examples of mathematical functions :)

So far I have found that GNU programs include a Lisp compiler and interpreter called ‘gcl‘ (GNU Common Lisp) and one simple tutorial on very basics of Common Lisp.

What I’m hoping as I’m writing about this is that maybe someone with knowledge is reading this and could post a comment with link(s) to a good tutorial for me to start working with :) Whether it will happen or not I will certainly be posting about my future experiments with Lisp here - I would like to gain at least enough knowledge to produce a Lisp version of my ‘tree.sh‘ (shell script to output directory tree structure nicely) as it is a good short program to write for getting overall picture of how a language feels write with compared to others - in fact I might write it with multiple languages for comparison of them (just for the fun of it).

Advanced users (and some regular desktop users too) have a need for process viewer (for those who don’t know what I mean, it’s equivalent of process lister that you get with ctrl-alt-del in windows) - and while some are happy or even insist on using nothing but graphical application for this (’gnome-system-monitor‘ in Gnome), some of us prefer to use one that is console based or prefer having both depending on situation so there is a big demand for a good console based process viewer for *nix systems.

The old ‘top’ and way more advanced alternative

Many people know ‘top‘ to be such tool - unfortunately many don’t know other interactive ones - there is non-interactive ‘ps‘ for getting process list, but it just prints process list (with information and formatting according to parameters) while interactive process lister lets you view the list, send signals to processes (ie. to kill a process) or to change their priority (’nice’ value). There however is much more advanced application than ‘top‘, yet very much like ‘top‘ in having all that is good in ‘top‘, but replacing many UI parts with better functionality. The app is called ‘htop‘.

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Was: “The Ur-Quan Masters for Debian (problem & solution)”

The Ur-Quan Masters is a 100% free implementation of original 3DO console version of Star Control II and there is also aditional optional speech package, package with original 3DO music and tree add-on remix packs for download. I ran into a problem not finding the game executable when I had installed The Ur-Quan Masters (on my Debian Etch stable/Lenny), a fantatic game I had come upon years ago originally. “…far journey, a space odyssey encompassing the realms of science-fiction and role-playing.“. It had both, fantastic single player adventure and a 2 player dualing game that really got me addicted before even trying the single player. (more…)

I recently bumped into an article about conference where the issue of software patent laws needing a reform was discussed. I will list Couple things to highlight I picke out of the text here. First:

A couple of scholars noted that large software firms, among others, publicly opposed software patents in the 1980s.

The most important and interesting part is about innovation. As you all know, or should know, the patent laws were designed to promote innovation, especially so that small people could publish their inventions without the fear of big ones coming to steal their idea and get all the money. Heres the piece I find “The Important” one when it comes to software patents:

Some of the harm from software patents is obvious. Do they provide any compensating benefit? There was little, if any, evidence that they encourage innovation. Although the number of software patents has exploded in recent years, one panelist expressed doubt that success in the technology area was associated with patent ownership. He observed that had the young Bill Gates been confronted at the outset with the litigation risks of tens of thousands of software patents, he might have chosen to exercise his entrepreneurial skills in a field other than software. The point, of course, is that the current system to some extent discourages innovation and entrepreneurship – a travesty of its intended purpose.

At a minimum, history suggests that patents are not a significant incentive to innovation in the software field. As I pointed out in my remarks at the conference, the Federal Circuit case law finding software to be patentable mostly dates from the mid-1990s, and the software patent explosion has occurred in the last ten years or so. However, a great deal of software now in everyday use was created earlier. Free and open source software programs such as GNU Emacs, GCC, and Linux date from the 1980s and early 1990s. Some of the most widely used proprietary software programs, like Lotus 1-2-3, Microsoft Word, and Oracle were released in the early 1980s. There’s no reason to think that the developers of those and other successful software programs would have been more innovative if they could have obtained patents.

So he patent system does not work when it comes to software patents. In fact it is, at worst, a huge danger to future innovations in software. Software patent system is wrong and again the FOSS ideology comes from quite the opposite camp than big companies which now support software patent system:

It is theoretically possible that some software developers today are motivated by the hope of a new patent, but the likelier impact of our current patent system is to distract developers with anxieties about being sued over preexisting patents. We know beyond question that the the incentives of the patent system are not encouraging free and open source software developers. A patent entitles the holder to exclude others from making, using, and selling an invention. FOSS developers don’t want to exclude others this way – they want to share their code – and so FOSS developers in principle have no interest in obtaining patents.

My suggestion: The patent system should be completely ditched when it comes to abstract software.

To read the original article, browse at article Brookings Conference on Software and Business Method Patents Highlights Need for Reform on red hat press site.

To quote osnews.com article Nokia To Add LGPL to Qt Licensing Model…

After Nokia purchsed Trolltech last year, doubts arose about how Nokia would handle the dual licensing model of Qt, the advanced cross-platform toolkit which lies at the base of the KDE Free software desktop. As it turns out, these doubts were unfounded, as Nokia today announced it’s going to add the LGPL to Qt’s licensing model, starting with Qt 4.5.

…and the press release…

The move to LGPL licensing will provide open source and commercial developers with more permissive licensing than GPL and so increase flexibility for developers. In addition, Qt source code repositories will be made publicly available and will encourage contributions from desktop and embedded developer communities. With these changes, developers will be able to actively drive the evolution of the Qt framework.

Personally I’m eager to see if this will result in code exchanging between the GTK and Qt projects - something that the licensing has prevented before. It would seem logical and beneficial to both sides to take on that path but only the future will tell…