O plano hoje apresentado por Francisco Louçã, deputado do Bloco de Esquerda, para resolver a situação do BPP prevê o “fecho das portas” do banco e a entrega aos clientes dos produtos de retorno absoluto que subscreveram.
Por acaso alguém me sabe dizer onde é possível encontrar o dinheiro TODO que os clientes lá têm investido? Nenhum banco poderia satisfazer todos os clientes se estes fossem levantar todo o seu dinheiro, muito menos o BPP.
I’ve just watched Quantum of Solace the first one with this new guy as James Bond. I enjoyed the movie, but it was not a 007 movie.
It lacked:
Replace Craig with Statham, and it’s a regular action movie.
Boomkat – The Wreckoning (Lousy video, nice music!)
PS: I’m linking to dailymotion since youtube is getting on my nerves for always showing “video not available in your country”. The Internet is global and Google shouldn’t be doing this. I bet they have awesome lawyers that would kick RIAA’s ones.
First Bahnhof and now Tele2, two major ISPs in Sweden, are now deleting their logs after they stop being used by their servers. This decision aims to protect the anonymity of Internet users, but will probably not last long because of a law Sweden has approved to force ISPs to give the logs in cases of copyright infringement.
It makes sense ISPs are trying to help their clients to be anonymous. P2P is the largest slice of the Internet traffic, and the reason many people have more expensive plans (unlimited traffic and higher speeds).
Copyright infringement is a really weak reason to break our privacy. If they were talking about child abuse, pedophilia, it would be easier to understand, but this way we can be sure it’s the music industry lobby playing the Big Brother on us.
Btw, I found this on Carlos Morgado’s blog, be sure to check his opinion on Microsoft and ODF too ;)
My advice to everyone who is interested and can spare the (often substantial) time is: Keep your data in standard, interoperable formats as much as possible, and try out different, unfamiliar operating systems occasionally. It’s easiest to notice the weird negative things, but it’s myopic to assume there’s nothing good to be found. If nothing else, you can learn what doesn’t work for you, and why.
Ficam aqui umas notas finais relativamente à edição deste ano do Take Off. Para quem não tiver paciência para ler isto tudo, pode seguir já para o Questionário de Feedback.
Primeiro, para não pode estar presente e para quem quiser recordar os momentos, serão brevemente lançados os vídeos e pdfs das apresentações. A noção de brevemente vai depender do meu tempo livre para fazer merge do audio, vídeo e respectiva edição (Kudos ao Gaspar e ao Alex por tomarem conta do vídeo e audio respectivamente). Serão lançados no canal disponibilizado para o efeito no Sapo Vídeos e aparecerá no feed do costume.
Em relação às mudanças que fiz este ano, pareceu-me que o painel foi muito bem recebido pela audiência, apesar de ter sido eu a moderá-lo. Em relação a ter mais tempo para o networking, não me parece ter sido notado muito, sobretudo pelo atraso normal das apresentações. Eu bem digo aos oradores que só têm 45 minutos, mas teimam em alongar-se. O Alex até se deu ao trabalho de fazer um gráfico com os tempos.
Finalmente, gostaria de abordar o que me preocupou mais: O facto de depois de duas edições com cerca de 120 pessoas, este ano termos tido sensivelmente metade. Terá sido da data? Realmente não queriamos ter o evento no dia 25 de Abril, mas tivemos de nos ajeitar entre outros eventos (BarcampSpring, OFFF, etc..) e por uma sondagem que fiz, ninguém levantou problemas e quem trabalha ao Sábado mostrou-se agradado pela escolha.
Portanto a culpa foi da minha fraca divulgação. Eu fiz exactamente a mesma divulgação que o ano anterior, tirando os cartazes pela universidade (que não tinham resultado, vem sempre quase tudo de fora) e acrescentei ainda bastantes contactos à lista de emails a spammar. Sinto que foi menos divulgado em blogs e afins (mas surpreendemente tivemos participantes que souberam do evento pelo blog etwit do Sapo). Provavelmente deveria ter pedido mais divulgação nestes meios, mas não faz muito o meu estilo, prefiro que seja espontâneo.
Temos ainda a desculpa suprema, da Crise, que está muito caro a deslocação a Coimbra por um dia. Mas eu não acredito muito nessa.
O André escreveu também sobre este assunto apontando a falta de concretização como um problema dos empreendedores portugueses. De facto nas suas apresentações, o Carlos e o Leo criticaram exactamente isso a partir das suas experiências.
Continuo sem uma resposta exacta ao meu problema, mas poderá ter sido um bocadinho de tudo. Podem ajudar-me, respondendo ao Questionário de Feedback.
Finalmente, um facto curioso: Caíram ali duas raparigas de Comunicação e Marketing um pouco enganadas e acabaram por gostar bastante do evento. Isto faz-me pensar em alargar o público alvo do evento.
I’m a huge believer in scriptable software. Developers should design the core of their apps, with the most-common features, so it works out of the box. If the application is popular, users will ask for features for their particular usage, which makes sense to them, but not only to everybody.
The solution is to make the software extensible and there’s a few ways of doing this. The easiest is open-source the code. In some cases, this might add additional work when new versions come out, but it’s without any doubt, the option that gives more power to the users (or whoever they buy the changes from).
Another option is to allow plugins. This happens when there are bundles of features that make sense together and do not interfere with the core of the application. One good example is the Textmate bundles that extend the application for one language or technology.
Finally there’s another way of extending your application: scripting. This one is chosen when you need to change or add the behavior of your application. Scripting exists from old school editors like vim to full office suites like Microsoft Office (via VBScript).
Take the example of MetaEditor or Textadept, two small apps that have the core basics of an editor, and everything else can be added through small IronPython or Lua scripts. If you have you have a specialized task that only makes sense to you, you can go ahead and script it to increase your productivity.
The scripting ability is not only for programmers, regular users that spend a lot of time with some apps also need that power. There are a lot of companies that live off writing scripts for Microsoft Office and other Corporate Systems. Here in Portugal there is a whole business around a ERP software scripting.
In a recent interview with LifeHacker Woz said he still used Eudora Mail Client because it allowed him to add custom buttons.
Any feature in the menu list, any action there, can be added as a button. I changed it so I have a vertical menu bar, so I can have tons and tons of pre-made buttons saved right where I want them up top, and I learn where those place are. You can script actions to the buttons, too, so I can quickly copy messages to my assistants.
Why isn’t it just built into the operating system?
he later adds. Well, Mac OS X has AppleScript, a way of scripting some applications to change or add some behavior. The problem is that few developers add all of the possibilities to the “manageable actions”. 50% of all the applescripts I’ve used myself have some System Events call to hack into some menu item, or shortcut.
I believe all the OSes should provide a simple ‘scriptable interface’ for programmers to implement, just like they do to GUIs. It would give more power to the users and therefore more satisfaction, as well as create more business opportunities.
Textadept is a small Scintilla GTK+ based editor. It if like a small notepad++ cross-platform and extensible via Lua (much better than C++).
What makes me smile about Textadept is the ease to extend it. It’s super simple (textmate-like) and it’s cross-platform (althout GTK has a few issues in MacOS and Windows).
Avatar – The Last Airbender is an American animated series heavily inspired by Anime.
Avatar is set in a world divided in four nations, one for each element that some of the citizens can bend. Unfortunately while Aang was hibernated for 100 years, the Fire Nation conquered most of the world, and he is the last Airbender in the world. Luckily he is also the Avatar, the one person that can master all four elements and he is destined to defeat the Fire lord and bring peace to the world.
Although this is the traditional story for every epic quest, Avatar really nails it and makes an awesome show, with the extra that you can watch with small children. There is a lot of character evolution and the story line is unpredictable and makes sense at the same time. I really enjoyed it!
Last week was the zombie holidays, so I had to come up with something to keep me busy. TV shows are all a geek like me needs. In less than two weeks I saw Life, Coupling and Avatar (review coming up next).
Fábio recommend me Life when we were discussing over lunch what was the hottest babe in TV shows. And I’ll have to admit that Sarah Shahi is pretty hot.
Some could describe Life as some sort of CSI, but they wouldn’t be fair since the show is way more than just solving crimes. In CSI the formula is 20% characters + 80% crime-solving while Life is 20% solving crimes + 30% characters (mainly Charlie) + 50% story-line.
What makes Life the best show I’ve seen since Prison Break1 is the mix of the plot and the characters bio. Charlie Crews was a cop that was convicted for life. After 12 years in prison he was proven innocent and the state of LA gave him his badge and a compensation that made him multi-millionaire. Being a cop in prison was not nice for him, but he survived following Budda’s Zen. Now he applies that same philosophy to chicks, fast cars and a large mansion that has no furniture.
Charlie lives the first and second seasons in mixed feelings about revenge. Someone killed his friends, framed him and it’s now after him again. A must for everyone into intrigues.
1 And by Prison Break, I mean only the first season
Some time ago Diogo got me the Blue Man Group – The Complex Rock Tour, the recording of a live performance of the band. I loved it! Their music got a lot of counts the following months.
For those who don’t know, The Blue Man Group is three blue-headed weirdos who play “tubes” (read percussion) and their support band, who takes that beats to another level. The lyrics are usually insights of one’s mind, and it’s place in society. The best part is that it goes beyond the music. There is an enormous difference between the album and the live show. The three blue men, sometimes by themselves, others with the rest of the band, or not seldom with the audience, criticize society with a small leaning towards the musical world (hence the ‘How to be a Rock/MegaStar name’).
When we knew they were coming to Portugal, we bought the tickets to later find out it was on the same day as Barcamp PT Spring. Well, I guess some of the guys there didn’t even notice I was missing.
After a peaceful ride from Coimbra to Lisbon1, we got to the Casino2 and the show started. How to be a Megastar differs from “The Complex” since it’s indoors and targets casinos and other show rooms. It has more sketches, and Rock Concert Movement #3 is only performed in the last song. Also, the three guys, and the band are different from the ones in the video3. I liked the original singers the most, but that’s maybe because I was already used to them.
The show rocked, and I recommend it to anyone. And if you can’t, just download and watch the DVD, will you? Or just the youtube videos.
1 The worst part was getting the car ready. No, the other car. Where are the documents? … Ok, let’s go.
2 That is indeed chic. Fancy architecture with definitely gay bathrooms, with apparently no exit.
3 They have different members for tours and for concerts, and they do 3 shows a day, so there are probably two crews in the same tour.
Last semester I have worked mainly with Ruby (a Shoes app, and a Sinatra web-based game) and Scala (XMPP server, CLI and web-based clients). Now I’m back to Python.
Man, I miss Scala and the functional programing I did, and I wouldn’t feel so bad programming in Ruby, since I used blocks almost as Scala’s lambdas. Now I’m stuck with Python1 (yeah, me, the guy who started PythonLovers) where multi-line lambdas are still in my dreams.
I know Python can be used in a functional way (just like Ruby) but it doesn’t feels the same. Learning Scala really changed something about the way I write code. And for better, I’d say.
So if you are into programming, or just computer science, take some time and learn a functional programming. And yes, Scala is a bastard since it’s half function, half OO. Here’s a few slides that might make you interested in this elegant and scalable language2.
1 I’m not really stuck, I chose it over C and C++.
2 Okay, it has static typing… Bearable with type inference.
By the time Ruby on Rails became popular, Textmate was in every screencast around. But the majority of people used Windows (and a few Linux).
E Text Editor is a clone of Textmate for Windows, compatible with Textmate’s bundles and it costs almost the same thing.
I actually use Intype when in Windows since it’s free while in development1. But E just became more interesting since they released their code in GitHub.
It is not free software, since you still have to pay (and you must not change the license/serial part of the code), but you can improve it for your own needs. This is an excellent example of OpenSource in commercial applications.
1 I plan to use GEdit in Windows (via Portable Ubuntu) since with plugins it is almost at TM level.
If governments don’t worry about small companies, this is not going to end well… They are the base of a country’s economy.
Marcus Zarra wrote an article about not trusting documentation. It is based on the point that you are a lousy programmer compared to what you are going to be in the future. Therefore your documentation right now will suck for yourself in the future (and of course other people).
I really miss Bayesian filters in Google Reader. Apart from that, Google Reader is my favorite feed reader. Despite being really great among web-based readers, it lacks the design of a native Mac application (and yes, I have tried ReadAir but it’s not native anyway).
What holds me from switching to another reader is the sharing with other google users. I share a lot of stuff, and I also read from all my contacts, and it’s interesting stuff most of the time.
And this is the magic formula for my RSS-Crowdsourcing-OneMoreBuzzword-Filter™. When I have almost no time and lot of feed items, I skim over them and the ones that I find potentially interesting I share them instead of opening them in a new window, as I would if I had the time. So how this works? If it gets shared back by any of my contacts, I will read it later (and it’s because it is interesting). If not, it is lost in the unknowns of the tubes.
“Well, aren’t you spamming your contacts?” Hrrmm, yes, I am. Social network friends are cheap nowadays anyway.
Depois de ter sido entrevistado para a Visão sobre o twitter, fui convidado para estar presente no programa Janela Aberta no Rádio Clube., juntamente com o PauloQuerido
Para os interessados fica aqui o MP3. Acabei por falar quase só do TwitterNotes (À venda), mas tirei umas notas mais gerais.
